In the latter part of May, when the early spring flowers are just
beginning to fade, and when the leaves of the forest trees are
sufficiently expanded to display all the tints attending the infancy of
their growth, no plant attracts more admiration than the Canadian
Rhodora. The flowers, of a purple crimson, are in umbels on the ends of
the branches, appearing before the leaves. The corolla, consisting of
long narrow petals, very deeply cleft, the stamens on slender hairy
filaments, and the projecting style, resemble tufts of colored silken
fringe. The Rhodora is from two to six feet in height, and is one of the
most conspicuous ornaments of wet, bushy pastures in this part of the
country. It is the last in the train of the delicate flowers of spring,
and by its glowing hues indicates the coming of a brighter vegetation.
When other shrubs of different species are only half covered with
foliage, the Rhodora spreads out its flowers upon the surface of the
variegated ground, in plats and clumps of irregular sizes, and sheds a
checkered glow of crimson over whole acres of moor. The poets have said
but little of this flower because it wants individuality. We look upon
the blossoms of the Rhodora as we look upon the crimsoned clouds,
admiring their general glow, not the cast of single flowers. But there
is something very poetical in the rosy wreaths it affixes to the brows
of Nature, still pallid with the long confinement of winter.
[Illustration: CATKINS OF WILLOW.]