lot) MISSOURI STATE liOK'TICULTURAL SUCIE'TV. 



Shakespeare — than which no spot on earth can be fairer in its season; it 

 is a steep, gravelly hillside, facing north, covered with gray-green lichen 

 and moss, from out of which grew in the greatest abundance and luxuri- 

 ance both the uni-colored and bi-colored varieties of this incomparable 

 violet, with here and there a tuft of bright, golden buttercups to afford 

 a contrast of color. Another and somewhat rarer violet, which is, I think, 

 only a marked variety of ciicuUata, is very large and pure white, except 

 for some fine purple pencillings in the throat. The yellow and cream 

 white violets both of the stemmed and stemless sorts are abundant on 

 river banks, and on partially shaded rocky hills. 



Our most attractive mid-summer flowers belong to the lily, pea and 

 evening primrose families. Few of these are wood flowers. Most of 

 them court the sun and luxuriate in his most ardent beams. The golden 

 cassia^, the delicately variegated TepJirosia (called the " Turkey Pea " in 

 the Southern countries) and the fragile rosy globes of the sensitive briar 

 arc open throughout the sunny hours, but as evening approaches fold 

 their leaves and droop their blossom-crowned stalks and sleep till morn- 

 ing. The evening primroses, on the contrary, rouse to new energy as 

 twilight awakens; every blossom bud stands erect, and as we watch them 

 first one slender, strap-like sepal and then another lifts itself and turns 

 backward, and then, with a flirt, like the sudden openingof a parasol, the 

 broad white or golden petals unfurl and the heart of the flower is open 

 to the breezes and the noiseless visits of the nocturnal insects. 



During autumn, the sunflower family reigns supreme. Sunflower, 

 coreopsis and solidago spreading their garnered sunshine over the fields, 

 while the white of the clouds and the blue of ethereal spaces descend to 

 us in the asters and conociiniums. 



The heath and orchid families, while not with us, represented in the 

 profusion that they are in the Eastern and Southern States, are by no 

 means absent from our flora. On our wooded highlands and mineral 

 hills several species of huckleberries and blueberries flourish, and in sim- 

 ilar situations the rhododendron unfolds its purple chalices. In dusky 

 forest ailcs the ghostly Monotropa silent stands, verdursless in stem and 

 leaves as well as blossom. 



" Flowers cold and deathly pale, 



No flush upon their alabaster cheek, 



They feel no sun nor bend to any gale, 

 No bees their white bells seek," 



