ANTENNARIA PLANTAGINIFOLIA. 



MOUSE-EAR EVERLASTING. 



XATUKAI. ORDER, COMl'OSITTE. (AsTEKACK/f: ok I.ini.i.kv.) 



ANTENNARIA TLANTAGINIFOLIA, Hook. — Stem simple, with procumbent runners at base; 

 radical leaves spatulate, or elliptic, and three-nerved; corymb clustered; involucral scales 

 greenish. (Darlington's Flora Cestrica. See also Gray's Manual of the Botany of the 

 Northern United States ■inA Wood's Class-Book of Botany.) 



N the early spring few flowers are hailed with more 

 I pleasure than the Mouse-Ear Everlasting, or " Pussy's 

 Foot " of the young folks. The plant is by no means handsome, 

 in the ordinary acceptation of the word, but it comes at a season 

 of the year when everything is welcome, and expectations are 

 not very high-strung. In Pennsylvania it is generally in flower 

 in April, and even on warm March days children often go out 

 into the woods and wild places in the hope of finding Pussy's 

 Foot in bloom; and Mr. Brodhead, writing in the "American 

 Naturalist" for 1S69, includes it in a list of ten plants which 

 flower earliest of all in Cass Countv, Missouri. 



In the article just referred to, there are also some very inter- 

 esting figures, showing that the comparative earliness of differ- 

 ent kinds of flowers is not regularly the same every year, and 

 that a season which is favorable to one plant may not be as 

 favorable to another. In the year 1S64, for instance, the White 

 Dogs-Tooth Violet, Eiythrouittin albiduiu, was in flower as 

 early as the 29th of March, while our Mouse-Ear Everlasting 

 did not open till the 27th of April, or nearly a month later. 

 The next year the Dog's-Tooth Violet did not open before the 

 2d of April, while our plant bloomed fully a week earlier than 



