Part 4

In Canada, there are two species; one with few flowers, white, both leaves and flowers larger than the more common form; the blossoms of the latter are more numerous, smaller, and of a pale pink colour, veined with lines of a deeper rose colour, forming a slender raceme; sometimes the little pedicels or flower stalks are bent or twisted to one side, so as to throw the flowers in one direction.

The scape springs from a small deep tuber, bearing a single pair of soft, oily, succulent leaves. In the white flowered species these leaves are placed about midway up the stem, but in the pink (C. Virginica) the leaves lie closer to the ground, and are smaller and of a dark bluish green hue. Our SPRING BEAUTY well deserves its pretty poetical name. It comes in with the Robin, and the song sparrow, the hepatica, and the first white violet; it lingers in shady spots, as if unwilling to desert us till more sunny days have wakened up a wealth of brighter blossoms to gladden the eye; yet the first, and the last, are apt to be most prized by us, with flowers, as well as other treasures.

How infinitely wise and merciful are the arrangements of the Great Creator. Let us instance the connection between BEES and FLOWERS. In cold climates the former lie torpid, or nearly so, during the long months of Winter, until the genial rays of the sun and light have quickened vegetation into activity, and buds and blossoms open, containing the nutriment necessary for this busy insect tribe.

The BEES seem made for the Blossoms; the BLOSSOMS for the BEES.

On a bright March morning what sound can be more in harmony with the sunshine and blue skies, than the murmuring of the honeybees, in a border of cloth of gold crocuses? what sight more cheerful to the eye? But I forget. Canada has few of these sunny flowers, and no March days like those that woo the hive bees from their winter dormitories. And April is with us only a name. We have no April month of rainbow suns and showers. We miss the deep blue skies, and silver throne-like clouds that cast their fleeting shadows over the tender springing grass and corn; we have no mossy lanes odorous with blue violets. One of our old poets thus writes:

“Ye violets that first appear, By your pure purple mantles known, Like the proud virgins of the year, As if the spring were all your own, What are ye when the rose is blown.”

We miss the turfy banks, studded with starry daisies, pale primroses and azure blue-bells.

Our May is bright and sunny, more like to the English March; it is indeed a month of promise—a month of many flowers. But too often its fair buds and blossoms are nipped by frost, “and winter, lingering, chills the lap of May.”

In the warmth and shelter of the forest, vegetation appears. The black leaf mould, so light and rich, quickens the seedlings into rapid growth, and green leaves and opening buds follow soon after the melting of the snows of winter. The starry blossoms of the hepatica, blood-root, bellwort, violets, white, yellow and blue, with the delicate Coptis (gold-thread), come forth and are followed by many a lovely flower, increasing with the more genial seasons of May and June.

But our April flowers are but few, comparatively speaking, and so we prize our early Violets, Hepaticas and Spring Beauty.

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Miskodeed—Indian name for Spring Beauty.

Sir Henry Wotton—written in 1651.

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3 AQUILEGIA CANADENSIS (Wild Columbine)

2 TRILLIUM GRANDIFLORUM (Large white Trillium)

1 ERYTHRONIUM AMERICANUM (Yellow adders tongue)

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NAT. ORD. LILIACEÆ.

ADDERS-TONGUE. (DOG-TOOTHED VIOLET.) Erythronium Americanum.

“And spotted Adders-tongue with drooping bell, Greeting the new-born spring.”

IN rich black mould, on the low banks of creeks and open woodlands, large beds of these elegant lilies may be seen piercing the softened ground in the month of April; the broad lanceolate leaves are beautifully clouded with purple or reddish brown, or sometimes with milky white. Each bulb of the second year’s growth produces two leaves, and between these rises a round naked scape, (or flower stem), terminated by a drooping yellow bell. The unfolded bud is striped with lines of dark purple. A few hours of sunshine and warm wind soon expands the flower, which is composed of six coloured sepals, recurved, which form a lily-like turbaned flower; each segment grooved, and spotted at the base, with oblong purplish brown dots. The outer surface of the sepals is marked with dark lines. The stamens are six; anthers, oblong; pollen of a brick-red, or dull orange colour, varying to yellow. The style is club-shaped; stigmas three, united.

This elegant yellow lily bends downward when expanded, as if to hide its glories from the full glare of the sun-light. The clouded leaves are of an oily smoothness, resisting the moisture of rain and dew.

The name Dogs-tooth Violet seems very inappropriate. The pointed segments of the bell may have suggested the resemblance to the tooth of a dog, but it is difficult to trace any analogy between this flower and the violet, no two plants presenting greater dissimilarity of form or habit than the lily and the violet, though often blended in the verse of the poet. The American name of the Adders-tongue is more significant.

The White Flowered Adders-tongue grows, it has been said, in the more western portion of Canada, on the shores of Lake Huron, probably the Erythronium albidum of Gray.

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The name Dogs-tooth refers to the shape of the small pointed white bulbs of the common European species, so well known in English gardens.—PROF. LAWSON.

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