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Japan (Japan) (search for this): chapter 5
me a more fascinating interest than these secret movements of vegetation,—the sweet, blind instinct with which flowers cling to old domains until absolutely compelled to forsake them. How touching is the fact, now well known, that salt-water plants still flower beside the Great Lakes, yet dreaming of the time when those waters were briny as the sea! Nothing in the demonstrations of Geology seem grander than the light lately thrown by Professor Gray, from the analogies between the flora of Japan and of North America, upon the successive epochs of heat which led the wandering flowers along the Arctic lands, and of cold which isolated them once more. Yet doubtless these humble movements of our local plants may be laying up results as important, and may hereafter supply evidence of earth's changes upon some smaller scale. May expands to its prime of beauty; the summer birds come with the fruit-blossoms, the gardens are deluged with bloom, and the air with melody, while in the woods
Glastonbury (United Kingdom) (search for this): chapter 5
wth of most plants is condensed into ten weeks, while in the mother country the full activity is maintained through sixteen. But even the English winter does not seem to be a winter, in the same sense as ours, appearing more like a chilly and comfortless autumn. There is no month in the English year when some special plant does not bloom: the Colt's-foot there opens its fragrant flowers from December to February; the yellowflowered Hellebore, and its cousin, the sacred Christmas Rose of Glastonbury, extend from January to March; and the Snowdrop and Primrose often come before the first of February. Something may be gained, much lost, by that perennial succession; those links, however slight, must make the floral period continuous to the imagination; while our year gives a pause and an interval to its children, and after exhausted October has effloresced into Witch-Hazel, there is an absolute reserve of blossom until the Alders wave again. No symbol could so well represent Natur
Labrador (Canada) (search for this): chapter 5
ain, are now rare near Worcester, and growing rarer, though still abundant a hundred miles farther inland. In several bits of old, swampy wood one may still find, usually close together, the Hobble-Bush and the Painted Trillium, the Mitella, or Bishop's-Cap, and the snowy Tiarella. Others still have entirely vanished within ten years, and that in some cases without any adequate explanation. The dainty white Corydalis, profanely called Dutchman's Breeches, and the quaint, woolly Ledum, or Labrador Tea, have disappeared within that time. The beautiful Linnaea is still found annually, but flowers no more; as is also the case, in all but one distant locality, with the once abundant Rhododendron. Nothing in Nature has for me a more fascinating interest than these secret movements of vegetation,—the sweet, blind instinct with which flowers cling to old domains until absolutely compelled to forsake them. How touching is the fact, now well known, that salt-water plants still flower besid
Wigwam Hill (Massachusetts, United States) (search for this): chapter 5
ing just a dream of sunset on their edges, and just a breath from the green sea in their hearts. The Laurel, on the other hand, maintains its ground, imperturbable and almost impassable, on every hillside, takes no hints, suspects no danger, and nothing but the most unmistakable onset from spade or axe can diminish its profusion. Gathering it on the most lavish scale seems only to serve as wholesale pruning; nor can I conceive that the Indians, who once ruled over this whole county from Wigwam Hill, could ever have found it more inconveniently abundant than now. We have perhaps no single spot where it grows in such perfect picturesqueness as at The Laurels, on the Merrimack, just above Newburyport, —a whole hillside scooped out and the hollow piled solidly with flowers, and pines curving around it above, and the river encircling it below, on which your boat glides along, while you look up through glimmering arcades of bloom. But for the last half of June it monopolizes everything
Worcester (United Kingdom) (search for this): chapter 5
times bloom with all heaven on its petals? Why can one recognize the Plymouth May-flower, as soon as seen, by its wondrous depth of color? Perhaps it blushes with triumph to see how Nature has outwitted the Pilgrims, and even succeeded in preserving her deer like an English duke, still maintaining the deepest woods in Massachusetts precisely where those sturdy immigrants first began their clearings. The Hepatica (called also Liverwort, Squirrel-Cup, or Blue Anemone) has been found in Worcester as early as March seventeenth, and in Danvers on March twelfth,—dates which appear almost the extreme of credibility. Our next wild-flower in this region is the Claytonia, or Spring-Beauty, which is common in the Middle States, but here found in only a few localities. It is the Indian Miskodeed, and was said to have been left behind when mighty Peboan, the Winter, was melted by the breath of Spring. It is an exquisitely delicate little creature, bears its blossoms in clusters, unlike mo
Lake Quinsigamond (Massachusetts, United States) (search for this): chapter 5
pikes grow always tall and close, reminding one of Hyacinths, when in perfection, but more delicate and beautiful. The only locality I know for it in this vicinity lies seven miles away, where a little inlet from the lower, winding bays of Lake Quinsigamond goes stealing up among a farmer's hay-fields, and there, close beside the public road and in full view of the farm-house, this rare creature fills the water. But to reach it we commonly row down the lake to a sheltered lagoon, separated fnging from the twenty-third of May to the sixth of July. The Lupine is one of our most travelled plants; for, though never seen off the American continent, it stretches to the Pacific, and is found upon the Arctic coast. On these banks of Lake Quinsigamond it grows in great families, and should be gathered in masses and placed in a vase by itself; for it needs no relief from other flowers, its own soft leaves afford background enough, and though the white variety rarely occurs, yet the varyin
Great Lakes (search for this): chapter 5
ve disappeared within that time. The beautiful Linnaea is still found annually, but flowers no more; as is also the case, in all but one distant locality, with the once abundant Rhododendron. Nothing in Nature has for me a more fascinating interest than these secret movements of vegetation,—the sweet, blind instinct with which flowers cling to old domains until absolutely compelled to forsake them. How touching is the fact, now well known, that salt-water plants still flower beside the Great Lakes, yet dreaming of the time when those waters were briny as the sea! Nothing in the demonstrations of Geology seem grander than the light lately thrown by Professor Gray, from the analogies between the flora of Japan and of North America, upon the successive epochs of heat which led the wandering flowers along the Arctic lands, and of cold which isolated them once more. Yet doubtless these humble movements of our local plants may be laying up results as important, and may hereafter suppl
Cuba (Cuba) (search for this): chapter 5
The procession of the flowers In Cuba there is a blossoming shrub whose multitudinous crimson flowers are so seductive to the hummingbirds that they hover all day around it, buried in its blossoms until petal and wing seem one. At first upright, the gorgeous bells droop downward, and fall unwithered to the ground, and are thence called by the Creoles Cupid's Tears. Fredrika Bremer relates that daily she brought home handfuls of these blossoms to her chamber, and nightly they all disappeared. One morning she looked toward the wall of the apartment, and there, in a long crimson line, the delicate flowers went ascending one by one to the ceiling, and passed from sight. She found that each was borne laboriously onward by a little, colorless ant much smaller than itself: the bearer was invisible, but the lovely burdens festooned the wall with beauty. To a watcher from the sky, the march of the flowers of any zone across the year would seem as beautiful as that West-Indian pagea
Newburyport (Massachusetts, United States) (search for this): chapter 5
de, takes no hints, suspects no danger, and nothing but the most unmistakable onset from spade or axe can diminish its profusion. Gathering it on the most lavish scale seems only to serve as wholesale pruning; nor can I conceive that the Indians, who once ruled over this whole county from Wigwam Hill, could ever have found it more inconveniently abundant than now. We have perhaps no single spot where it grows in such perfect picturesqueness as at The Laurels, on the Merrimack, just above Newburyport, —a whole hillside scooped out and the hollow piled solidly with flowers, and pines curving around it above, and the river encircling it below, on which your boat glides along, while you look up through glimmering arcades of bloom. But for the last half of June it monopolizes everything in the Worcester woods,—no one picks anything else; and it fades so slowly that I have found a perfect blossom on the last day of July. At the same time with this royalty of the woods, the queen of th
Brookline (Massachusetts, United States) (search for this): chapter 5
mottled leaves; but it is always a disappointment to gather them, for in-doors they miss the full ardor of the sunbeams, and are apt to go to sleep and nod expressionless from the stalk. And almost on the same day with this bright apparition one may greet a multitude of concurrent visitors, arriving so accurately together that it is almost a matter of accident which of the party shall first report himself. Perhaps the Dandelion should have the earliest place; indeed, I once found it in Brookline on the seventh of April. But it cannot ordinarily be expected before the twentieth, in Eastern Massachusetts, and rather later in the interior; while by the same date I have also found near Boston the Cowslip, or Marsh-Marigold, the Spring-Saxifrage, the Anemones, the Violets, the Bellwort, the Houstonia, the Cinquefoil, and the Strawberry-blossom. Varying, of course, in different spots and years, the arrival of this coterie is yet nearly simultaneous, and they may all be expected hereab
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