WILD, OR NATIVE FLOWERS. 79 



dropped from the parent tree to mingle with its kindred dust, It is a 

 fond old custom, which time and the world's later fashions have not yet 

 changed among the simple habitants. 



Surely we may say with the sweet poet : — 



" They are loves last gift, 

 Bring flowers — pale flowers." 



Yellow Coltsfoot— Tusstlago Farfara, (L.) 



A large proportion of our flowers of Mid-summer and Autumn 

 are of the Composite order, but in the Spring they are rare, with a few 

 exceptions, such as the Early-flowering Everlasting, the Fleabanes and 

 the Coltsfoot. 



The first flower that blossoms is the Coltsfoot, Tusstlago farfara, 

 (L.) which breaks the ground in April with its scaly, leafless stem 

 and single-headed, orange-yellow rayed flower. It is a coarse, 

 uninteresting plant, not common, excepting in wet, clayey soil ; seldom 

 found in the forest. It is the earliest plant of the Canadian Spring, and 

 prized on that account, and for its medicinal virtue, real or imaginary. 

 Both flower and leaf are larger than the British species, but its habits 

 are similar. 



In July, August and September our rayed flowers predominate, 

 especially in the two latter months ; it is then, when the more delicate 

 herbaceous flowers are perfecting their seeds, that our hardy Sun flowers 

 lift up their showy heads and seem to court the glare of the summer 

 sunshine ; it is then that we see our open fields gay with Rudbeckias, 

 Chrysanthemums, Ragworts, Golden-rods, Thistles and Hawk- 

 weeds. In the forest we find our White Eupatoriums, Prenanthes, 

 and Fire-weeds. On all wastes and neglected spots the wild 

 Chamomile abounds, as if to supply a tonic for all agues and 

 intermittents. The beautiful Aster family may now be seen in 

 fields, by waysides, on lonely lake-shores, in thickets, on the margins 

 of pools and mill-dams or waving its graceful flowery branches, on the 

 grassy plains and within the precincts of the forest. There are species 

 for each locality — white, blue, purple, lilac, pearly-blue — with many 

 varieties of shade, height and foliage ; some species graceful, bending, 

 and spreading, others stiff, upright and coarse ; but the species are number- 

 less and their habits as various. The most elegant are the Aster cordi- 

 ^folius, (L.) and A. ptmiceus, (Ait). The most delicate, the little white, 

 shrubby Aster, A. multiflorus, (L.) with reddish disc and golden-tipped 

 anthers, which give a lovely look to the crowded, small, white-rayed 

 flowers, as if they were spangled with gold-dust. On dry, gravelly banks, 



