SQUIRREL CORN 



Dicentra canadensis ( Goldie) Walp. 



Early spring Tlie ricli black oarth of the old woods slope goes up 

 Woods and up to hci^lits of limestoiio. The earth is full of 



limestone chips, w ith here and there a fragment of an 

 Indian arrowhead where a Hopewellian hunter lost it. The redbuds are 

 in bloom on the great wooded liill, all the way up to the limestone out- 

 eroppiugs, where shadbush clings like an alpine t)usb to the ledges and 

 flutters its tufts of wliitc l)l(X)m in the sunshine. 



It is April and the dutchman's breeches are in bloom on all that soft 

 black-earth slope l)eneath the redbuds and s]vicel)ush. beneath the newly 

 leafing buckeyes ami the still bare oaks. Wild larkspur is here, purple 

 and pale blue and white; there are yellow violets, blue violets, red tril- 

 liums, bloodroot. And there rises an odor as of hyacinths, keen and splen- 

 did above the moist odors of the spring woods. Si|uiirel corn is blossom- 

 ing there. 



At first it l)lends so well with the dutchman's breeches that one 

 actually may pass tht'in by as all one species. Then, as if the scene comes 

 more sharply into focus, there stand out the stiller stems of the squirrel 

 c(u-n with their tighter, narrower, pulled llowers, with tiieir longer, more 

 frilly wings l)elow. The leaves seem nnich the same as those of dutchman's 

 breeches, yet are more compact. And there is that jjcrfume. No dutch- 

 man's breeches ever had that fragrance, not that odor-of-hyacinths which 

 rises so strongly from the ivory flowers of the S(pnrrel corn, there on the 

 wo(Kle(l hill below the liiu(v<tone ledges. 



Squirrel corn has a further diflerence. Instead of growing from pink 

 conns, it has several yellow conns which look very much like broad, round 

 little grains of yellow Indian cora. 



G 



