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| INDOOR STUDIES. |
| BIRDS AND POETS, with Other Papers. |
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| A YEAR IN THE FIELDS. Selections appropriate to each season |
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RIVERBY
BY
JOHN BURROUGHS
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
Copyright, 1894, 1895,
BY JOHN BURROUGHS.
_All rights reserved._
_The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.
PREFATORY NOTE
I have often said to myself, "Why should not one name his books as
he names his children, arbitrarily, and let the name come to mean
much or little, as the case may be?" In the case of the present
volume—probably my last collection of Out-of-door Papers—I have taken
this course, and have given to the book the name of my place here on
the Hudson, "Riverby," by the river, where the sketches were written,
and where for so many years I have been an interested spectator of the
life of nature, as, with the changing seasons, it has ebbed and flowed
past my door.
J. B.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. AMONG THE WILD-FLOWERS 1
II. THE HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS 33
III. BIRDS' EGGS 61
IV. BIRD COURTSHIP 77
V. NOTES FROM THE PRAIRIE 87
VI. EYE-BEAMS 111
VII. A YOUNG MARSH HAWK 133
VIII. THE CHIPMUNK 145
IX. SPRING JOTTINGS 155
X. GLIMPSES OF WILD LIFE 171
XI. A LIFE OF FEAR 193
XII. LOVERS OF NATURE 203
XIII. A TASTE OF KENTUCKY BLUE-GRASS 221
XIV. IN MAMMOTH CAVE 241
XV. HASTY OBSERVATION 251
XVI. BIRD LIFE IN AN OLD APPLE-TREE 271
XVII. THE WAYS OF SPORTSMEN 277
XVIII. TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS 283
INDEX 317
RIVERBY
I
AMONG THE WILD FLOWERS
I
Nearly every season I make the acquaintance of one or more new
flowers. It takes years to exhaust the botanical treasures of any one
considerable neighborhood, unless one makes a dead set at it, like
an herbalist. One likes to have his floral acquaintances come to him
easily and naturally, like his other friends. Some pleasant occasion
should bring you together. You meet in a walk, or touch elbows on a
picnic under a tree, or get acquainted on a fishing or camping-out
expedition. What comes to you in the way of birds or flowers, while
wooing only the large spirit of open-air nature, seems like special
good fortune. At any rate, one does not want to bolt his botany, but
rather to prolong the course. One likes to have something in reserve,
something to be on the lookout for on his walks. I have never yet
found the orchid called calypso, a large, variegated purple and yellow
flower, Gray says, which grows in cold, wet woods and bogs,—very
beautiful and very rare. Calypso, you know, was the nymph who fell
in love with Ulysses and detained him seven years upon her island,
and died of a broken heart after he left her. I have a keen desire to
see her in her floral guise, reigning over some silent bog, or rising
above the moss of some dark glen in the woods, and would gladly be the
Ulysses to be detained at least a few hours by her.
I will describe her by the aid of Gray, so that if any of my readers
come across her they may know what a rarity they have found. She may
be looked for in cold, mossy, boggy places in our northern woods. You
will see a low flower, somewhat like a lady's-slipper, that is, with
an inflated sac-shaped lip; the petals and sepals much alike, rising
and spreading; the color mingled purple and yellow; the stem, or scape,
from three to five inches high, with but one leaf,—that one thin and
slightly heart-shaped, with a stem which starts from a solid bulb. That
is the nymph of our boggy solitudes, waiting to break her heart for any
adventurous hero who may penetrate her domain.
Several of our harmless little wild flowers have been absurdly named
out of the old mythologies: thus, Indian cucumber root, one of
Thoreau's favorite flowers, is named after the sorceress Medea, and
is called "medeola," because it was at one time thought to possess
rare medicinal properties; and medicine and sorcery have always been
more or less confounded in the opinion of mankind. It is a pretty and
decorative sort of plant, with, when perfect, two stages or platforms
of leaves, one above the other. You see a whorl of five or six leaves,
a foot or more from the ground, which seems to bear a standard with
another whorl of three leaves at the top of it. The small, colorless,
recurved flowers shoot out from above this top whorl. The whole
expression of the plant is singularly slender and graceful. Sometimes,
probably the first year, it only attains to the first circle of leaves.
This is the platform from which it will rear its flower column the next
year. Its white, tuberous root is crisp and tender, and leaves in the
mouth distinctly the taste of cucumber. Whether or not the Indians used
it as a relish as we do the cucumber, I do not know.
Still another pretty flower that perpetuates the name of a Grecian
nymph, a flower that was a new find to me a few summers ago, is the
arethusa. Arethusa was one of the nymphs who attended Diana, and was by
that goddess turned into a fountain, that she might escape the god of
the river, Alpheus, who became desperately in love with her on seeing
her at her bath. Our Arethusa is one of the prettiest of the orchids,
and has been pursued through many a marsh and quaking bog by her
lovers. She is a bright pink-purple flower an inch or more long, with
the odor of sweet violets. The sepals and petals rise up and arch over
the column, which we may call the heart of the flower, as if shielding
it. In Plymouth County, Massachusetts, where the arethusa seems common,
I have heard it called Indian pink.
But I was going to recount my new finds. One sprang up in the footsteps
of that destroying angel, Dynamite. A new railroad cut across my
tramping-ground, with its hordes of Italian laborers and its mountains
of giant-powder, etc., was enough to banish all the gentler deities
forever from the place. But it did not.
Scarcely had the earthquake passed when, walking at the base of a
rocky cliff that had been partly blown away in the search for stone
for two huge abutments that stood near by, I beheld the débris at the
base of the cliff draped and festooned by one of our most beautiful
foliage plants, and one I had long been on the lookout for, namely,
the climbing fumitory. It was growing everywhere in the greatest
profusion, affording, by its tenderness, delicacy, and grace, the most
striking contrast to the destruction the black giant had wrought. The
power that had smote the rock seemed to have called it into being.
Probably the seeds had lain dormant in cracks and crevices for years,
and when the catastrophe came, and they found themselves in new soil
amid the wreck of the old order of things, they sprang into new life,
and grew as if the world had been created anew for them, as in a sense
it had. Certainly, they grew most luxuriantly, and never was the ruin
wrought by powder veiled by more delicate, lace-like foliage.[5:1]
The panicles of drooping, pale flesh-colored flowers heightened the
effect of the whole. This plant is a regular climber; it has no extra
appendages for that purpose, and does not wind, but climbs by means
of its young leafstalks, which lay hold like tiny hands or hooks. The
end of every branch is armed with a multitude of these baby hands.
The flowers are pendent, and swing like ear jewels. They are slightly
heart-shaped, and when examined closely look like little pockets made
of crumpled silk, nearly white on the inside or under side, and pale
purple on the side toward the light, and shirred up at the bottom.
And pockets they are in quite a literal sense, for, though they fade,
they do not fall, but become pockets full of seeds. The fumitory is a
perpetual bloomer from July till killed by the autumn frosts.
[5:1] Strange to say, the plant did not appear in that
locality the next season, and has never appeared since.
Perhaps it will take another dynamite earthquake to wake it
up.
The closely allied species of this plant, the dicentra (Dutchman's
breeches and squirrel corn), are much more common, and are among our
prettiest spring flowers. I have an eye out for the white-hearts
(related to the bleeding-hearts of the gardens, and absurdly called
"Dutchman's breeches") the last week in April. It is a rock-loving
plant, and springs upon the shelves of the ledges, or in the débris at
their base, as if by magic. As soon as blood-root has begun to star the
waste, stony places, and the first swallow has been heard in the sky,
we are on the lookout for dicentra. The more northern species, called
"squirrel corn" from the small golden tubers at its root, blooms in
May, and has the fragrance of hyacinths. It does not affect the rocks,
like all the other flowers of this family.
My second new acquaintance the same season was the showy
lady's-slipper. Most of the floral ladies leave their slippers in
swampy places in the woods; only the stemless one (_acaule_) leaves
hers on dry ground before she reaches the swamp, commonly under
evergreen trees, where the carpet of pine needles will not hurt her
feet. But one may penetrate many wet, mucky places in the woods before
he finds the prettiest of them all, the showy lady's-slipper,—the
prettiest slipper, but the stoutest and coarsest plant; the flower
large and very showy, white, tinged with purple in front; the stem two
feet high, very leafy, and coarser than bear-weed. Report had come to
me, through my botanizing neighbor, that in a certain quaking sphagnum
bog in the woods the showy lady's-slipper could be found. The locality
proved to be the marrowy grave of an extinct lake or black tarn. On
the borders of it the white azalea was in bloom, fast fading. In the
midst of it were spruces and black ash and giant ferns, and, low in the
spongy, mossy bottom, the pitcher plant. The lady's-slipper grew in
little groups and companies all about. Never have I beheld a prettier
sight,—so gay, so festive, so holiday-looking. Were they so many gay
bonnets rising above the foliage? or were they flocks of white doves
with purple-stained breasts just lifting up their wings to take flight?
or were they little fleets of fairy boats, with sail set, tossing on
a mimic sea of wild, weedy growths? Such images throng the mind on
recalling the scene, and only faintly hint its beauty and animation.
The long, erect, white sepals do much to give the alert, tossing look
which the flower wears. The dim light, too, of its secluded haunts, and
its snowy purity and freshness, contribute to the impression it makes.
The purple tinge is like a stain of wine which has slightly overflowed
the brim of the inflated lip or sac and run part way down its snowy
sides.
This lady's-slipper is one of the rarest and choicest of our wild
flowers, and its haunts and its beauty are known only to the few.
Those who have the secret guard it closely, lest their favorite be
exterminated. A well-known botanist in one of the large New England
cities told me that it was found in but one place in that neighborhood,
and that the secret, so far as he knew, was known to but three persons,
and was carefully kept by them.
A friend of mine, an enthusiast on orchids, came one June day a long
way by rail to see this flower. I conducted him to the edge of the
swamp, lifted up the branches as I would a curtain, and said, "There
they are."
"Where?" said he, peering far into the dim recesses.
"Within six feet of you," I replied.
He narrowed his vision, and such an expression of surprise and delight
as came over his face! A group of a dozen or more of the plants, some
of them twin-flowered, were there almost within reach, the first he had
ever seen, and his appreciation of the scene, visible in every look and
gesture, was greatly satisfying. In the fall he came and moved a few of
the plants to a tamarack swamp in his own vicinity, where they throve
and bloomed finely for a few years, and then for some unknown reason
failed.
Nearly every June, my friend still comes to feast his eyes upon this
queen of the cypripediums.
While returning from my first search for the lady's-slipper, my hat
fairly brushed the nest of the red-eyed vireo, which was so cunningly
concealed, such an open secret, in the dim, leafless underwoods, that
I could but pause and regard it. It was suspended from the end of a
small, curving sapling; was flecked here and there by some whitish
substance, so as to blend it with the gray mottled boles of the trees;
and, in the dimly lighted ground-floor of the woods, was sure to escape
any but the most prolonged scrutiny. A couple of large leaves formed a
canopy above it. It was not so much hidden as it was rendered invisible
by texture and position with reference to light and shade.
A few summers ago I struck a new and beautiful plant in the shape of
a weed that had only recently appeared in that part of the country. I
was walking through an August meadow when I saw, on a little knoll, a
bit of most vivid orange, verging on a crimson. I knew of no flower of
such a complexion frequenting such a place as that. On investigation,
it proved to be a stranger. It had a rough, hairy, leafless stem
about a foot high, surmounted by a corymbose cluster of flowers or
flower-heads of dark vivid orange-color. The leaves were deeply notched
and toothed, very bristly, and were pressed flat to the ground. The
whole plant was a veritable Esau for hairs, and it seemed to lay hold
upon the ground as if it was not going to let go easily. And what a
fiery plume it had! The next day, in another field a mile away, I
chanced upon more of the flowers. On making inquiry, I found that a
small patch or colony of the plants had appeared that season, or first
been noticed then, in a meadow well known to me from boyhood. They
had been cut down with the grass in early July, and the first week in
August had shot up and bloomed again. I found the spot aflame with
them. Their leaves covered every inch of the surface where they stood,
and not a spear of grass grew there. They were taking slow but complete
possession; they were devouring the meadow by inches. The plant seemed
to be a species of hieracium, or hawkweed, or some closely allied
species of the composite family, but I could not find it mentioned in
our botanies.
A few days later, on the edge of an adjoining county ten miles distant,
I found, probably, its headquarters. It had appeared there a few years
before, and was thought to have escaped from some farmer's door-yard.
Patches of it were appearing here and there in the fields, and the
farmers were thoroughly alive to the danger, and were fighting it
like fire. Its seeds are winged like those of the dandelion, and it
sows itself far and near. It would be a beautiful acquisition to our
midsummer fields, supplying a tint as brilliant as that given by the
scarlet poppies to English grain-fields. But it would be an expensive
one, as it usurps the land completely.[10:1]
[10:1] This observation was made ten years ago. I have since
learned that the plant is _Hieracium aurantiacum_ from
Europe, a kind of hawkweed. It is fast becoming a common weed
in New York and New England. (1894.)
Parts of New England have already a midsummer flower nearly as
brilliant, and probably far less aggressive and noxious, in
meadow-beauty, or rhexia, the sole northern genus of a family of
tropical plants. I found it very abundant in August in the country
bordering on Buzzard's Bay. It was a new flower to me, and I was
puzzled to make it out. It seemed like some sort of scarlet evening
primrose. The parts were in fours, the petals slightly heart-shaped and
convoluted in the bud, the leaves bristly, the calyx-tube prolonged,
etc.; but the stem was square, the leaves opposite, and the tube
urn-shaped. The flowers were an inch across, and bright purple. It
grew in large patches in dry, sandy fields, making the desert gay with
color; and also on the edges of marshy places. It eclipses any flower
of the open fields known to me farther inland. When we come to improve
our wild garden, as recommended by Mr. Robinson in his book on wild
gardening, we must not forget the rhexia.
Our seacoast flowers are probably more brilliant in color than the same
flowers in the interior. I thought the wild rose on the Massachusetts
coast deeper tinted and more fragrant than those I was used to. The
steeple-bush, or hardhack, had more color, as had the rose gerardia and
several other plants.
But when vivid color is wanted, what can surpass or equal our
cardinal-flower? There is a glow about this flower as if color emanated
from it as from a live coal. The eye is baffled, and does not seem
to reach the surface of the petal; it does not see the texture or
material part as it does in other flowers, but rests in a steady, still
radiance. It is not so much something colored as it is color itself.
And then the moist, cool, shady places it affects, usually where it has
no floral rivals, and where the large, dark shadows need just such a
dab of fire! Often, too, we see it double, its reflected image in some
dark pool heightening its effect. I have never found it with its only
rival in color, the monarda or bee-balm, a species of mint. Farther
north, the cardinal-flower seems to fail, and the monarda takes its
place, growing in similar localities. One may see it about a mountain
spring, or along a meadow brook, or glowing in the shade around the
head of a wild mountain lake. It stands up two feet high or more, and
the flowers show like a broad scarlet cap.
The only thing I have seen in this country that calls to mind the
green grain-fields of Britain splashed with scarlet poppies may be
witnessed in August in the marshes of the lower Hudson, when the broad
sedgy and flaggy spaces are sprinkled with the great marsh-mallow. It
is a most pleasing spectacle,—level stretches of dark green flag or
waving marsh-grass kindled on every square yard by these bright pink
blossoms, like great burning coals fanned in the breeze. The mallow is
not so deeply colored as the poppy, but it is much larger, and has the
tint of youth and happiness. It is an immigrant from Europe, but it is
making itself thoroughly at home in our great river meadows.
The same day your eye is attracted by the mallows, as your train skirts
or cuts through the broad marshes, it will revel with delight in the
masses of fresh bright color afforded by the purple loosestrife, which
grows in similar localities, and shows here and there like purple
bonfires. It is a tall plant, grows in dense masses, and affords a
most striking border to the broad spaces dotted with the mallow. It,
too, came to us from over seas, and first appeared along the Wallkill,
many years ago. It used to be thought by the farmers in that vicinity
that its seed was first brought in wool imported to this country from
Australia, and washed in the Wallkill at Walden, where there was a
woolen factory. This is not probable, as it is a European species, and
I should sooner think it had escaped from cultivation. If one were to
act upon the suggestions of Robinson's "Wild Garden," already alluded
to, he would gather the seeds of these plants and sow them in the
marshes and along the sluggish inland streams, till the banks of all
our rivers were gay with these brilliant exotics.
Among our native plants, the one that takes broad marshes to itself
and presents vast sheets of color is the marsh milkweed, far less
brilliant than the loosestrife or the mallow, still a missionary in the
wilderness, lighting up many waste places with its humbler tints of
purple.
One sometimes seems to discover a familiar wild flower anew by coming
upon it in some peculiar and striking situation. Our columbine is at
all times and in all places one of the most exquisitely beautiful of
flowers; yet one spring day, when I saw it growing out of a small seam
on the face of a great lichen-covered wall of rock, where no soil or
mould was visible,—a jet of foliage and color shooting out of a black
line on the face of a perpendicular mountain wall and rising up like a
tiny fountain, its drops turning to flame-colored jewels that hung and
danced in the air against the gray rocky surface,—its beauty became
something magical and audacious. On little narrow shelves in the rocky
wall the corydalis was blooming, and among the loose bowlders at its
base the blood-root shone conspicuous, suggesting snow rather than
anything more sanguine.
Certain flowers one makes special expeditions for every season. They
are limited in their ranges, and must generally be sought for in
particular haunts. How many excursions to the woods does the delicious
trailing arbutus give rise to! How can one let the spring go by without
gathering it himself when it hides in the moss! There are arbutus days
in one's calendar, days when the trailing flower fairly calls him to
the woods. With me, they come the latter part of April. The grass is
greening here and there on the moist slopes and by the spring runs; the
first furrow has been struck by the farmer; the liver-leaf is in the
height of its beauty, and the bright constellations of the blood-root
shine out here and there; one has had his first taste and his second
taste of the spring and of the woods, and his tongue is sharpened
rather than cloyed. Now he will take the most delicious and satisfying
draught of all, the very essence and soul of the early season, of the
tender brooding days, with all their prophecies and awakenings, in the
handful of trailing arbutus which he gathers in his walk. At the mere
thought of it, one sees the sunlight flooding the woods, smells the
warm earthy odors which the heat liberates from beneath the dry leaves,
hears the mellow bass of the first bumblebee,
"Rover of the underwoods,"
or the finer chord of the adventurous honey-bee seeking store for
his empty comb. The arriving swallows twitter above the woods; the
first chewink rustles the dry leaves; the northward-bound thrushes,
the hermit and the gray-cheeked, flit here and there before you. The
robin, the sparrow, and the bluebird are building their first nests,
and the first shad are making their way slowly up the Hudson. Indeed,
the season is fairly under way when the trailing arbutus comes. Now
look out for troops of boys and girls going to the woods to gather it!
and let them look out that in their greed they do not exterminate it.
Within reach of our large towns, the choicer spring wild flowers are
hunted mercilessly. Every fresh party from town raids them as if bent
upon their destruction. One day, about ten miles from one of our Hudson
River cities, there got into the train six young women loaded down
with vast sheaves and bundles of trailing arbutus. Each one of them
had enough for forty. They had apparently made a clean sweep of the
woods. It was a pretty sight,—the pink and white of the girls and the
pink and white of the flowers! and the car, too, was suddenly filled
with perfume,—the breath of spring loaded the air; but I thought it
a pity to ravish the woods in that way. The next party was probably
equally greedy, and, because a handful was desirable, thought an armful
proportionately so; till, by and by, the flower will be driven from
those woods.
Another flower that one makes special excursions for is the pond-lily.
The pond-lily is a star, and easily takes the first place among lilies;
and the expeditions to her haunts, and the gathering her where she
rocks upon the dark secluded waters of some pool or lakelet, are the
crown and summit of the floral expeditions of summer. It is the
expedition about which more things gather than almost any other: you
want your boat, you want your lunch, you want your friend or friends
with you. You are going to put in the greater part of the day; you
are going to picnic in the woods, and indulge in a "green thought in
a green shade." When my friend and I go for pond-lilies, we have to
traverse a distance of three miles with our boat in a wagon. The road
is what is called a "back road," and leads through woods most of the
way. Black Pond, where the lilies grow, lies about one hundred feet
higher than the Hudson, from which it is separated by a range of rather
bold wooded heights, one of which might well be called Mount Hymettus,
for I have found a great deal of wild honey in the forest that covers
it. The stream which flows out of the pond takes a northward course for
two or three miles, till it finds an opening through the rocky hills,
when it makes rapidly for the Hudson. Its career all the way from the
lake is a series of alternating pools and cascades. Now a long, deep,
level stretch, where the perch and the bass and the pickerel lurk, and
where the willow-herb and the royal osmunda fern line the shores; then
a sudden leap of eight, ten, or fifteen feet down rocks to another
level stretch, where the water again loiters and suns itself; and so
on through its adventurous course till the hills are cleared and the
river is in sight. Our road leads us along this stream, across its
rude bridges, through dark hemlock and pine woods, under gray, rocky
walls, now past a black pool, then within sight or hearing of a foaming
rapid or fall, till we strike the outlet of the long level that leads
to the lake. In this we launch our boat and paddle slowly upward over
its dark surface, now pushing our way through half-submerged treetops,
then ducking under the trunk of an overturned tree which bridges the
stream and makes a convenient way for the squirrels and wood-mice, or
else forcing the boat over it when it is sunk a few inches below the
surface. We are traversing what was once a continuation of the lake;
the forest floor is as level as the water and but a few inches above
it, even in summer; it sweeps back a half mile or more, densely covered
with black ash, red maple, and other deciduous trees, to the foot of
the rocky hills which shut us in. What glimpses we get, as we steal
along, into the heart of the rank, dense, silent woods! I carry in my
eye yet the vision I had, on one occasion, of a solitary meadow lily
hanging like a fairy bell there at the end of a chance opening, where a
ray of sunlight fell full upon it, and brought out its brilliant orange
against the dark green background. It appeared to be the only bit of
bright color in all the woods. Then the song of a single hermit thrush
immediately after did even more for the ear than the lily did for the
eye. Presently the swamp sparrow, one of the rarest of the sparrows,
was seen and heard; and that nest there in a small bough a few feet
over the water proves to be hers,—in appearance a ground-bird's nest
in a bough, with the same four speckled eggs. As we come in sight of
the lilies, where they cover the water at the outlet of the lake, a
brisk gust of wind, as if it had been waiting to surprise us, sweeps
down and causes every leaf to leap from the water and show its pink
under side. Was it a fluttering of hundreds of wings, or the clapping
of a multitude of hands? But there rocked the lilies with their golden
hearts open to the sun, and their tender white petals as fresh as
crystals of snow. What a queenly flower, indeed, the type of unsullied
purity and sweetness! Its root, like a black, corrugated, ugly reptile,
clinging to the slime, but its flower in purity and whiteness like a
star. There is something very pretty in the closed bud making its way
up through the water to meet the sun; and there is something touching
in the flower closing itself up again after its brief career, and
slowly burying itself beneath the dark wave. One almost fancies a sad,
regretful look in it as the stem draws it downward to mature its seed
on the sunless bottom. The pond-lily is a flower of the morning; it
closes a little after noon; but after you have plucked it and carried
it home, it still feels the call of the morning sun, and will open to
him, if you give it a good chance. Coil their stems up in the grass
on the lawn, where the sun's rays can reach them, and sprinkle them
copiously. By the time you are ready for your morning walk, there they
sit upon the moist grass, almost as charmingly as upon the wave.
Our more choice wild flowers, the rarer and finer spirits among them,
please us by their individual beauty and charm; others, more coarse and
common, delight us by mass and profusion; we regard not the one, but
the many, as did Wordsworth his golden daffodils:—
"Ten thousand saw I at a glance
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance."
Of such is the marsh marigold, giving a golden lining to many a
dark, marshy place in the leafless April woods, or marking a little
watercourse through a greening meadow with a broad line of new gold.
One glances up from his walk, and his eye falls upon something like
fixed and heaped-up sunshine there beneath the alders, or yonder in the
freshening field.
In a measure, the same is true of our wild sunflowers, lighting up many
a neglected bushy fence-corner or weedy roadside with their bright,
beaming faces. The evening primrose is a coarse, rankly growing plant;
but, in late summer, how many an untrimmed bank is painted over by it
with the most fresh and delicate canary yellow!
We have one flower which grows in vast multitudes, yet which is
exquisitely delicate and beautiful in and of itself: I mean the
houstonia, or bluets. In May, in certain parts of the country, I see
vast sheets of it; in old, low meadow bottoms that have never known the
plow, it covers the ground like a dull bluish or purplish snow which
has blown unevenly about. In the mass it is not especially pleasing;
it has a faded, indefinite sort of look. Its color is not strong and
positive enough to be effective in the mass, yet each single flower
is a gem of itself. The color of the common violet is much more firm
and pronounced; and how many a grassy bank is made gay with it in the
mid-May days! We have a great variety of violets, and they are very
capricious as to perfume. The only species which are uniformly fragrant
are the tall Canada violet, so common in our northern woods,—white,
with a tinge of purple to the under side of its petals,—and the small
white violet of the marshy places; yet one summer I came upon a host
of the spurred violet in a sunny place in the woods which filled the
air with a delicate perfume. A handful of them yielded a perceptible
fragrance, but a single flower none that I could detect. The Canada
violet very frequently blooms in the fall, and is more fragrant at such
times than in its earlier blooming. I must not forget to mention that
delicate and lovely flower of May, the fringed polygala. You gather
it when you go for the fragrant, showy orchis,—that is, if you are
lucky enough to find it. It is rather a shy flower, and is not found in
every wood. One day we went up and down through the woods looking for
it,—woods of mingled oak, chestnut, pine, and hemlock,—and were about
giving it up when suddenly we came upon a gay company of them beside an
old wood-road. It was as if a flock of small rose-purple butterflies
had alighted there on the ground before us. The whole plant has a
singularly fresh and tender aspect. Its foliage is of a slightly purple
tinge, and of very delicate texture. Not the least interesting feature
about the plant is the concealed fertile flower which it bears on a
subterranean shoot, keeping, as it were, one flower for beauty and one
for use.
II
In our walks we note the most showy and beautiful flowers, but not
always the most interesting. Who, for instance, pauses to consider that
early species of everlasting, commonly called mouse-ear, that grows
nearly everywhere by the roadside or about poor fields? It begins to be
noticeable in May, its whitish downy appearance, its groups of slender
stalks crowned with a corymb of paper-like buds, contrasting it with
the fresh green of surrounding grass or weeds. It is a member of a very
large family, the Compositæ, and does not attract one by its beauty;
but it is interesting because of its many curious traits and habits.
For instance, it is diœcious, that is, the two sexes are represented
by separate plants; and, what is more curious, these plants are usually
found separated from each other in well-defined groups, like the men
and women in an old-fashioned country church,—always in groups; here
a group of females, there, a few yards away, a group of males. The
females may be known by their more slender and graceful appearance,
and, as the season advances, by their outstripping the males in growth.
Indeed, they become real amazons in comparison with their brothers.
The staminate or male plants grow but a few inches high; the heads
are round, and have a more dusky or freckled appearance than do the
pistillate; and as soon as they have shed their pollen their work is
done, they are of no further use, and by the middle of May, or before,
their heads droop, their stalks wither, and their general collapse
sets in. Then the other sex, or pistillate plants, seem to have taken
a new lease of life; they wax strong, they shoot up with the growing
grass and keep their heads above it; they are alert and active; they
bend in the breeze; their long, tapering flower-heads take on a tinge
of color, and life seems full of purpose and enjoyment with them. I
have discovered, too, that they are real sun-worshipers; that they
turn their faces to the east in the morning, and follow the sun in his
course across the sky till they all bend to the west at his going down.
On the other hand, their brothers have stood stiff and stupid, and
unresponsive to any influence of sky and air, so far as I could see,
till they drooped and died.
Another curious thing is that the females seem vastly more numerous,—I
should say almost ten times as abundant. You have to hunt for the
males; the others you see far off. One season I used every day to pass
several groups or circles of females in the grass by the roadside. I
noted how they grew and turned their faces sunward. I observed how
alert and vigorous they were, and what a purplish tinge came over their
mammæ-shaped flower-heads as June approached. I looked for the males;
to the east, south, west, none could be found for hundreds of yards.
On the north, about two hundred feet away, I found a small colony of
meek and lowly males. I wondered by what agency fertilization would
take place,—by insects, or by the wind? I suspected it would not take
place. No insects seemed to visit the flowers, and the wind surely
could not be relied upon to hit the mark so far off, and from such an
unlikely corner, too. But by some means the vitalizing dust seemed to
have been conveyed. Early in June, the plants began to shed their down,
or seed-bearing pappus, still carrying their heads at the top of the
grass, so that the breezes could have free access to them, and sow the
seeds far and wide.
As the seeds are sown broadcast by the wind, I was at first puzzled
to know how the two sexes were kept separate, and always in little
communities, till I perceived, what I might have read in the botany,
that the plant is perennial and spreads by offsets and runners, like
the strawberry. This would of course keep the two kinds in groups by
themselves.
Another plant which has interesting ways and is beautiful besides is
the adder's-tongue, or yellow erythronium, the earliest of the lilies,
and one of the most pleasing. The April sunshine is fairly reflected in
its revolute flowers. The lilies have bulbs that sit on or near the top
of the ground. The onion is a fair type of the lily in this respect.
But here is a lily with the bulb deep in the ground. How it gets there
is well worth investigating. The botany says that the bulb is deep in
the ground, but offers no explanation. Now it is only the bulbs of the
older or flowering plants that are deep in the ground. The bulbs of the
young plants are near the top of the ground. The young plants have but
one leaf, the older or flowering ones have two. If you happen to be in
the woods at the right time in early April, you may see these leaves
compactly rolled together, piercing the matted coating of sear leaves
that cover the ground like some sharp-pointed instrument. They do not
burst their covering or lift it up, but pierce through it like an awl.
But how does the old bulb get so deep into the ground? In digging
some of them up one spring in an old meadow bottom, I had to cleave
the tough fibrous sod to a depth of eight inches. The smaller ones
were barely two inches below the surface. Of course they all started
from the seed at the surface of the soil. The young botanist, or
nature-lover, will find here a field for original research. If, in late
May or early June, after the leaves of the plant have disappeared, he
finds the ground where they stood showing curious, looping, twisting
growths or roots, of a greenish white color, let him examine them. They
are as smooth and as large as an angle-worm, and very brittle. Both
ends will be found in the ground, one attached to the old bulb, the
other boring or drilling downward and enlarged till it suggests the new
bulb. I do not know that this mother root in all cases comes to the
surface. Why it should come at all is a mystery, unless it be in some
way to get more power for the downward thrust. My own observations upon
the subject are not complete, but I think in the foregoing I have given
the clew as to how the bulb each year sinks deeper and deeper into the
ground.
It is a pity that this graceful and abundant flower has no good and
appropriate common name. It is the earliest of the true lilies,
and it has all the grace and charm that belong to this order of
flowers. _Erythronium_, its botanical name, is not good, as it is
derived from a Greek word that means red, while one species of our
flower is yellow and the other is white. How it came to be called
adder's-tongue I do not know; probably from the spotted character of
the leaf, which might suggest a snake, though it in no wise resembles
a snake's tongue. A fawn is spotted, too, and "fawn-lily" would be
better than adder's-tongue. Still better is the name "trout-lily,"
which has recently been proposed for this plant. It blooms along the
trout streams, and its leaf is as mottled as a trout's back. The name
"dog's-tooth" may have been suggested by the shape and color of the
bud, but how the "violet" came to be added is a puzzle, as it has not
one feature of the violet. It is only another illustration of the
haphazard way in which our wild flowers, as well as our birds, have
been named.
In my spring rambles I have sometimes come upon a solitary specimen of
this yellow lily growing beside a mossy stone where the sunshine fell
full upon it, and have thought it one of the most beautiful of our wild
flowers. Its two leaves stand up like a fawn's ears, and this feature,
with its recurved petals, gives it an alert, wide-awake look. The white
species I have never seen. I am told they are very abundant on the
mountains in California.
Another of our common wild flowers, which I always look at with an
interrogation-point in my mind, is the wild ginger. Why should this
plant always hide its flower? Its two fuzzy, heart-shaped green leaves
stand up very conspicuously amid the rocks or mossy stones; but its one
curious, brown, bell-shaped flower is always hidden beneath the moss
or dry leaves, as if too modest to face the light of the open woods.
As a rule, the one thing which a plant is anxious to show and to make
much of, and to flaunt before all the world, is its flower. But the
wild ginger reverses the rule, and blooms in secret. Instead of turning
upward toward the light and air, it turns downward toward the darkness
and the silence. It has no corolla, but what the botanists call a lurid
or brown-purple calyx, which is conspicuous like a corolla. Its root
leaves in the mouth a taste precisely like that of ginger.
This plant and the closed gentian are apparent exceptions, in their
manner of blooming, to the general habit of the rest of our flowers.
The closed gentian does not hide its flower, but the corolla never
opens; it always remains a closed bud. I used to think that this
gentian could never experience the benefits of insect visits, which
Darwin showed us were of such importance in the vegetable world. I once
plucked one of the flowers into which a bumblebee had forced his way,
but he had never come out; the flower was his tomb.
I am assured, however, by recent observers, that the bumblebee does
successfully enter the closed corolla, and thus distribute its
pollen.[27:1]
[27:1] "A bumblebee came along and lit upon a cluster of
asters. Leaving these, it next visited a head of gentians,
and with some difficulty thrust its tongue through the valves
of the nearest blossom; then it pushed in its head and body
until only the hind legs and the tip of the abdomen were
sticking out. In this position it made the circuit of the
blossom, and then emerged, resting a moment to brush the
pollen from its head and thorax into the pollen-baskets,
before flying again to a neighboring aster. The whole process
required about twenty seconds." _Ten New England Blossoms and
their Insect Visitors_, CLARENCE MOORES WEED, pp. 93, 94.
There is yet another curious exception which I will mention, namely,
the witch-hazel. All our trees and plants bloom in the spring, except
this one species; this blooms in the fall. Just as its leaves are
fading and falling, its flowers appear, giving out an odor along the
bushy lanes and margins of the woods that is to the nose like cool
water to the hand. Why it should bloom in the fall instead of in the
spring is a mystery. And it is probably because of this very curious
trait that its branches are used as divining-rods, by certain credulous
persons, to point out where springs of water and precious metals are
hidden.
Most young people find botany a dull study. So it is, as taught from
the text-books in the schools; but study it yourself in the fields and
woods, and you will find it a source of perennial delight. Find your
flower, and then name it by the aid of the botany. There is so much in
a name. To find out what a thing is called is a great help. It is the
beginning of knowledge; it is the first step. When we see a new person
who interests us, we wish to know his or her name. A bird, a flower, a
place,—the first thing we wish to know about it is its name. Its name
helps us to classify it; it gives us a handle to grasp it by; it sheds
a ray of light where all before was darkness. As soon as we know the
name of a thing, we seem to have established some sort of relation with
it.
The other day, while the train was delayed by an accident, I wandered
a few yards away from it along the river margin seeking wild flowers.
Should I find any whose name I did not know? While thus loitering,
a young English girl also left the train and came in my direction,
plucking the flowers right and left as she came. But they were all
unknown to her; she did not know the name of one of them, and she
wished to send them home to her father, too. With what satisfaction she
heard the names! The words seemed to be full of meaning to her, though
she had never heard them before in her life. It was what she wanted: it
was an introduction to the flowers, and her interest in them increased
at once.
"That orange-colored flower which you just plucked from the edge of
the water,—that is our jewel-weed," I said.
"It looks like a jewel," she replied.
"You have nothing like it in England, or did not have till lately; but
I hear it is now appearing along certain English streams, having been
brought from this country."
"And what is this?" she inquired, holding up a blue flower with a very
bristly leaf and stalk.
"That is viper's bugloss, or blue-weed, a plant from your side of the
water, one that is making itself thoroughly at home along the Hudson,
and in the valleys of some of its tributaries among the Catskills. It
is a rough, hardy weed, but its flower, with its long, conspicuous
purple stamens and blue corolla, as you see, is very pretty."
"Here is another emigrant from across the Atlantic," I said, holding up
a cluster of small white flowers, each mounted upon a little inflated
brown bag or balloon,—the bladder campion. "It also runs riot in
some of our fields, as I am sure you will not see it at home." She
went on filling her hands with flowers, and I gave her the names of
each,—sweet clover or melilotus, a foreign plant; vervain (foreign);
purple loosestrife (foreign); toad-flax (foreign); chelone, or
turtle-head, a native; and the purple mimulus, or monkey-flower, also a
native. It was a likely place for the cardinal-flower, but I could not
find any. I wanted this hearty English girl to see one of our native
wild flowers so intense in color that it would fairly make her eyes
water to gaze upon it.
Just then the whistle of the engine summoned us all aboard, and in a
moment we were off.
When one is stranded anywhere in the country in the season of flowers
or birds, if he feels any interest in these things he always has
something ready at hand to fall back upon. And if he feels no interest
in them he will do well to cultivate an interest. The tedium of an
eighty-mile drive which I lately took (in September), cutting through
parts of three counties, was greatly relieved by noting the various
flowers by the roadside. First my attention was attracted by wild thyme
making purple patches here and there in the meadows and pastures. I got
out of the wagon and gathered some of it. I found honey-bees working
upon it, and remembered that it was a famous plant for honey in parts
of the Old World. It had probably escaped from some garden; I had never
seen it growing wild in this way before. Along the Schoharie Kill, I
saw acres of blue-weed, or viper's bugloss, the hairy stems of the
plants, when looked at toward the sun, having a frosted appearance.
What is this tall plant by the roadside, thickly hung with pendent
clusters of long purplish buds or tassels? The stalk is four feet high,
the lower leaves are large and lobed, and the whole effect of the plant
is striking. The clusters of purple pendents have a very decorative
effect. This is a species of nabalus, of the great composite family,
and is sometimes called lion's-foot. The flower is cream-colored, but
quite inconspicuous. The noticeable thing about it is the drooping
or pendulous clusters of what appear to be buds, but which are the
involucres, bundles of purple scales, like little staves, out of which
the flower emerges.
In another place I caught sight of something intensely blue in a wet,
weedy place, and, on getting some of it, found it to be the closed
gentian, a flower to which I have already referred as never opening,
but always remaining a bud. Four or five of these blue buds, each like
the end of your little finger and as long as the first joint, crown the
top of the stalk, set in a rosette of green leaves. It is one of our
rarer flowers, and a very interesting one, well worth getting out of
the wagon to gather. As I drove through a swampy part of Ulster County,
my attention was attracted by a climbing plant overrunning the low
bushes by the sluggish streams, and covering them thickly with clusters
of dull white flowers. I did not remember ever to have seen it before,
and, on taking it home and examining it, found it to be climbing
boneset. The flowers are so much like those of boneset that you would
suspect their relationship at once.