WILD FLOWERS IN NOVEMBER. 1 39 



Wild Flowers in November. 



Hunting wild flowers in November seems odd, when to the every 

 day mortal the leaves, turned scarlet and gold and brown, are chief 

 among the delights of a ramble in the woods. 



It so impressed the writer when, a day or two ago, he started out 

 with the Torrey Botanical Club, on the first of its autumn field meet- 

 ings — the programme phrase for a veritable scouring of hill and 

 dale for rare plants and floral oddities — round about Eastchester. 



Now, the Torrey Botanical Society, as those of scientific turn well 

 know, is a body of 400 botanists— some of them celebrities and world 

 famed authorities, and some amateur enthusiasts — who meet fort- 

 nigtly in New York in the pursuit of their favorite stud}-. 



The field days are specimen hunts, when new and strange flowers, 

 oddities in mosses and fungi are collected for discussion and study 

 at the meetings of the club. 



With the idea uppermost in his untaught mind, that a November 

 flower hunt was doubtless the weird fancj' of a coterie of enthusi- 

 asts, the writer went, saw and was conquered by curious mosses, 

 strange fungi and an anomalous pussj^ willow putting forth silvery- 

 furred blooms in contradiction of the law of season. 



Guided by Mrs. N. L,. Britton, wife of the director of the New 

 York Botanical Garden in Bronx Park, and a specialist jn mosses, 

 the club began its jaunt from Wakefield. With the part}' were Dr. 

 George N. Carleton, professor of botany in Columbia College ; Ed- 

 mund B. Southwick, entomologist, or, popularly, the "bug man" 

 for Central Park, and Mr. George Nicholson, the celebrated Eng- 

 lish scientist, for many years in charge of the Kew Gardens, in Lon- 

 don, author of a four-volume dictionary on gardening, and delegate 

 for the Royal Horticultural Society of Great Britain to the interna- 

 tional conference on horticultural hj^brids held in this city early in 

 October. 



The freak willow was discovered by Mr. Nicholson, growing in a 

 lane on the outskirts of Wakefield. The branches were literally 

 covered with the fluffy blooms, and half a dozen youngsters were 

 climbing in the tree, picking the " pussies." Scores of these wil- 

 lows in the vicinity were as sere and yellow as autrumn could make 

 them, but this lone tree was entirely springlike. 



Inquiry among near-by residents revealed the fact that this same 

 willow never blooms in spring, but regularly each autumn its sil- 



