80 :©otani5 



beauty. Strong, abundant, lasting, taking kindly to 

 being picked and put into a bouquet ; readily domes- 

 ticating itself on our lawns, if it is only treated with 

 so much courtesy as allowing its seed pods to ripen 

 before the lawn mower goes over them— such a flower 

 is our spring beauty. Some botanists refer to this 

 plant as a lover of damp woods or brooksides, but it 

 seems to love any spot where it ma}^ be permitted to 

 grow. The leaves are two long, narrow straps, spring- 

 ing opposite each other from the base of the stem. A 

 number of blossoms grow in the loose cluster, the 

 top one opening latest. This flower expands in 

 broad sunshine and closes itself under a cloudy sky. 

 The calyx has two sepals, the corolla five Avhite 

 petals striped with pink, which give the whole flower 

 a rosy hue. No one of our wild flowers is a more 

 profuse bloomer, none lasts longer, almost none 

 arrives earlier to tell us " The flowers appear on the 

 earth, the time of the singing birds has come." 



