62 DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS. 
pearance in Lowell, and probably in other 
places. It is a coarse-looking little plant, 
delighting to grow in pure gravel; but its 
blossoms are pretty, and now, with not 
another flower of any sort near it, it looked, 
as the homely phrase is, ‘‘as handsome as 
a picture.”” Its more generally distributed 
congener, Senecio vulgaris, —also a for- 
elgner — is, next to the common chickweed, 
I should say, our very hardiest bloomer. 
At the beginning of the month it was in 
flower in an old garden in Melrose; and at 
Marblehead Neck a considerable patch of it 
was fairly yellow with blossoms all through 
December and January, and I know not 
how much longer. I saw no shepherd’s 
purse after December 27th, but knawel was 
in flower as late as January 18th. The 
golden-rods, it will be observed, are absent 
altogether from my list; and the same would 
have been true of the asters, but for a single 
plant. This, curiously enough, still bore 
five heads of tolerably fresh blossoms, after 
all itsnumberless companions, growing upon 
the same hillside, had succumbed to the 
frost. 
Of my sixteen plants, exactly one half are 
