BICKNELL: FERNS AND FLOWERING PLANTS OF NANTUCKET 617 
HUDSONIA ERICOIDES L. 
Few plants of Nantucket spread over the island more widely 
or in greater abundance than this little heathlike species and 
not one is more conspicuous in the landscape when in full bloom. 
Nor is there any other that, at flowering time, puts its scene in 
color with quicker transformation, for there come seasons when it 
bursts into bloom on all sides in the hours of a single hot morning. 
Earliest flowers May 30, 1909, quite generally in bloom June 2; 
first flowers June 4, 1911, in the early morning, everywhere in 
flower by noon; abundantly in bloom June 7, 1908, inflorescence 
becoming brown by the 13th and but few flowers remaining on 
the 18th; in the season of 1910 it had passed flowering in exposed 
places June 20, although still blooming freely in the shade of pine 
groves. 
After full bloom it remains for one or two weeks the season’s 
most conspicuous flower, spreading its sheets of gold along the 
roadways and over acres of plain and hillside, a radiant sight. 
A few days later the flowers are withered and the wide tracts 
that had glowed with their color become brown and rusty as 
if seared by fire. 
In open sandy places where this plant has formed the compact 
circular cushions that are one of its modes of growth, the flowers 
usually open first close to the ground on the side towards the 
morning sun, blending together in patches of expanding brightness 
as they continue to unfold. Gradually as the sun rises overhead 
the glow of color creeps back along the borders of the tuft, some- 
times uniting around its circumference in a golden ring. Soon 
afterwards the entire tuft has become an unbroken mass of bloom. 
Often in midsummer these cushion-like tufts even in the hottest 
and most exposed sandy spots remain fresh and green in bright 
contrast to their parched surroundings, calling to mind so remote 
a comparison as the stones along a woodland brook covered with 
green moss. 
In open pine scrub south of the town on June 5, I9I1, several 
patches of this plant, all near together, bore flowers of palest 
sulphur-yellow, in striking contrast to the normal bright yellow 
flowers everywhere about them. 
