WILDFLOWERS
This has been and is yet a great season for wildflowers; oceans of them line the roads through the woods, border the edges of the water-runlets, grow all along the old fences, and are scatter’d in profusion over the fields. An eight-petal’d blossom of gold-yellow, clear and bright, with a brown tuft in the middle, nearly as large as a silver half-dollar, is very common; yesterday on a long drive I noticed it thickly lining the borders of the brooks everywhere. Then there is a beautiful weed cover’d with blue flowers (the blue of the old Chinese teacups treasur’d by our grand-aunts), I am continually stopping to admire—a little larger than a dime, and very plentiful. White, however, is the prevailing color. The wild carrot I have spoken of; also the fragrant life-everlasting. But there are all hues and beauties, especially on the frequent tracts of half-open scrub-oak and dwarf-cedar hereabout—wild asters of all colors. Notwithstanding the frost-touch the hardy little chaps maintain themselves in all their bloom. The tree-leaves, too, some of them are beginning to turn yellow or drab or dull green. The deep wine-color of the sumachs and gum trees is already visible, and the straw-color of the dog-wood and beech. Let me give the names of some of these perennial blossoms and friendly weeds I have made acquaintance with hereabout one season or another in my walks:
| wild azalea |
dandelions |
| wild honeysuckle |
yarrow |
| wild roses |
coreopsis |
| golden rod |
wild pea |
| larkspur |
woodbine |
| early crocus |
elderberry |
| sweet flag (great patches of it) |
poke-weed |
| creeper, trumpet-flower |
sunflower |
| scented marjoram |
chamomile |
| snakeroot |
violets |
| Solomon’s seal |
clematis |
| sweet balm |
bloodroot |
| mint (great plenty) |
swamp magnolia |
| wild geranium |
milk-weed |
| wild heliotrope |
wild daisy (plenty) |
| burdock |
wild chrysanthemum |