I JO THE PLANT WORLD. 



is described in Gray's Manual, ranging, as I have found it, to a deep 

 Indian red, until my hands would hold no more. The Manual gives 

 this lily, "flowers, i or 2." I have picked many of them with three, 

 and not a few with four, blossoms, though never with more than four. 

 The Galax aphylla grows, literally, by the acre. Gray gives the 

 Pogonia verticillata as "rather rare, especially eastward." Hamilton 

 Gibson, in one of his delightful papers, refers to it as "quite rare." 

 I can go to one or two of my woodland gardens here, during their 

 season, and find the queer little things, like small, green-bodied 

 spiders with long, brown legs, by hundreds, and almost by thousands. 



The section has been covered in a general way, but it is more than 

 probable that, hidden away in this wilderness, there are still a goodly 

 number of plants which are not yet included in the catalogue. The 

 season is a long one. There is no month in the year in which I have 

 not found some wild-flower in blossom, though that is due to one or 

 two exceptionally mild seasons during December and January. 



The season opens with the Trailing Arbutus, which grows in a 

 profusion, and attains a development such as I have not seen equalled, 

 east or west. The earliest specimen which I have found was picked 

 in 1897, on February 24. The season really opens from March 12-18. 

 At that time, and only then, I am ready to say that the flowers have 

 come. I have seen them all killed by snow and frost after that date, 

 but that is exceptional. From that time until nearly, if not quite the 

 first of December, there is no time when one may not have some 

 wild-flowers on the table. About the middle of March, then, I begin 

 my flower-hunting rambles. 



Many of the early-comers are insignificant, and others are but 

 little valued because they are so abundant. Immediately upon the 

 heels of the Arbutus there come the Wood-Anemones, the Bluets, the 

 Dog-tooth Violets, the Blood-root, a half-dozen or more of the early 

 violets, and numbers of other blossoms. Early in April I begin my 

 search in certain localities for some of my special favorites, early- 

 comers, of the Orchid family — the Spectabilis, and the Yellow Cypri- 

 pedium. I get them both in abundance. The little Spectabilis, rang- 

 ing in its color from deep-purple, through pink-purple and white- 

 purple, to a few which I have found of a pure white, loves to hide 

 away along the side of old fallen logs. They are often a bit puzzling 

 to find, and that adds not a little to the interest of a search for them. 

 Gray says that the Yellow Lady's-slipper, both the C. pubescens and 

 the C. parvifloruin, grows in "bogs and low woods." My gardens of 

 them are in the rich coves on the mountain sides. I have picked many 

 a hundred of them at an altitude of over four thousand feet. Few 

 flowers make a more beautiful bouquet than those same yellow slippers 



