The American Botanist 



VOL. XV! JOLIET, ILL., FEBRUARY, 1910 No. 1 



\!>oon o' en t/iein heads blithe >^ipnil airs shall sing, 



-/i thousand ivildfloivens round them shall unfo 'd, 



^he green buds glisten in the deujs of spring, 



-^ind be all vernal rapture as of old. 



— Keble. 



LIBRARY 

 NEW YORK 

 BOTANICAL 



GARDEN. 



SOME SPRING WILDFLOWERS OF ALBERTA. 



By W. M. Buswell. 



NEAR the big" bend of Battle River one of the first flowers 

 to appear it the little pasque-flower. If the Spring is 

 early the first ones are seen early in April but perhaps the 

 next year they will not be seen before the first of May. For 

 several days before the first flowers appear, little balls of gray 

 fur may be seen all over the prairie where the pasque-flowers 

 are starting from the ground. These are soon followed by 

 the pretty bell-shaped bluish, lavender or sometimes pink 

 flowers. They are 3 to 5 inches high, the involucre and stem 

 covered with grayish hairs. As they grow older the flowers 

 grow upward on pedicels nearly as long as the main stem 

 leaving the hairy involucre where it was when the flower first 

 opened. In about a week or 10 days after the first flower ap- 

 pears the prairie is covered with them and the much divided 

 leaves are beginning to appear on the earliest ones. When 

 they are in full bloom the prairie looks like a large flower 

 garden. Later when in fruit the long feathery tails on the 

 fruit colors the prairie a nearly uniform gray. They are 

 generally called crocus flowers by the people here and I be- 

 lieve the name crocus amemone has been suggested for them 



