WILD VIOLETS. 



' [ ' HE first days of April usually bring into bloom upon our 

 ■■• wooded river hills the round-leaved violet, earliest of its 

 charming tribe. The dainty yellow flowers, streaked within 

 with brown, look like jaunty little bonnets, and are a pretty 

 sight amid the dun litter of the woodland floor. So eager are 

 the blossoms for a bath in the spring sunshine that they are 

 wide open before the leaves are grown. The latter emerge 

 quite leisurely from the mellow earth, rolled up like quills; 

 but once started, they grow wondrously, and in summer will 

 be found from three to four inches broad lying sleek and 

 glossy, flat upon the ground. 



It seems to me that Bryant must have had this earliest 

 of violets in mind when he wrote those familiar lines of "The 

 Yellow Violet": 



Ere beechen buds begin to swell, 



Or woods the bluebird's warble know, 

 The yellow violet's modest bell 



Peeps from the last year's leaves below. 

 The books, however, are disposed to award that honor 

 to another woodland beauty, the downy yellow violet, which 

 I usually do not find in my woods until two or three weeks 

 later, after the trees are in leaf and "the bluebird's warble" 

 has been heard. The blossoms of this later yellow violet are 

 shyly hid amid the abundant leafage which clothes the plant's 

 stems, and this calls attention to the fact that some violets 

 have leafy stalks while some bear their leaves all in a cluster 

 on the ground at the foot of the flower stems. 



Bearing this simple fact in mind, we shall begin to notice 

 that there are many varieties of wild flowers in our woods 

 and fields. The common blue violet of the roadsides and 

 meadows, for instance, has leaves only at its root, while an al- 

 most equally common one, though smaller and paler, is leafy 



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