106 
in 
from our May-flower in preferring a rich and moist soil, and its stem 
is soft and succulent like that of its ally the purslane {Fortulaca), 
while the stem of our May-flower is strong and woody, and its leaves 
are thick and hard. 
The family to which the lady belonged, who spoke of the spring 
beauty as the true May-flower, came from Connecticut; and it is easy 
to see why our May-flower was not theirs. In the region where they 
had lived before removing to St. John, the Epigcea would blossom in 
April, and the term "May-flower" would be inappropriate to it; hence 
some other blossom with them would have borne the name of " May- 
flower.'* The name and the associations connected with it were 
^ 
dear to those New England colonists; with what object more attrac- 
tive could they have associated the ideas and the name than the 
delicate spring beauty— a plant which abounds in the rich woods 
covering the mountains and hills of Western New England and New 
York. To the loyalists of Connecticut, therefore, the word ** May- 
flower" carried a different meaning from that which it bears with us. 
And to the loyaHsts of New York and New Jersey, where the 
Epigcea was known as the trailing arbutus, the idea of ** May-flower," 
as applied to this plant, was equally foreign. Their name for our 
May-flower, however, was not happily chosen, as the arbutus was one 
o^ those European heath plants which casts its leaves in the autumn, 
and in this resembles such American heath-plants as the leather-leaf 
{Cassandra) and the Lambkill {Rhodora). These cover the "barrens'* 
with foUage and flower in June and July, but are bare and brown i 
the winter. As the term " trailing arbutus" was used in the Middl 
States for the Epig(Ea within a short time after the loyalists left there, 
it was probably current in their time as well. Whether the spring 
beauty was their Mayflower or not, if is sufficiently clear that the 
Epigcea was not 
But to go one step further back in the history of the "May- 
flower." Washington Irving, in his ''Knickerbocker's History of New 
York," describes in a very amusing way the helplessness of the Dutch 
Governors of New York in their attempt to oppose the colonizing 
tendencies of the New Englander. He describes the encroachment 
of the Yankees upon the territory of their Dutch neighbors on the 
northern shore of Long Island Sound, and they even swarmed over into 
Long Island, displacing the Dutch or occupying the country in ad- 
vance of them. These Puritan farmers carried with them the^^ tradi- 
tion that their ancestors came over from England in the "May- 
flower." Many of them settled in Connecticut, and their descendants 
formed the bulk of the emigrants from that State whom we know 
under the name of loyalists. It is quite clear, however, that the 
May-flower for which the ship of the Pilgrim^ Fathers was named 
was not the "May-flower" of the loyalists, anymore than the plant so 
designated by the latter is the May-flower of the maritime Canadians, 
for neither the Epigcea repens nor the spring beauty were known to 
Europeans before the discovery of America. They are both natives 
of this continent and are unknown in the old. The May-flower oi 
the Pilgrims must, therefore, have been some other P^^^^~P^^^^f(, 
the hawthorn {CrafcBgus Oxycanthct), which appears to be alluded 
by Mickle in the following lines; 
