VIRGINIA BLUEBELLS (Cowslips) 



Mertensia virginica ( L. ) Pers. 



April - May It is May. next door to summer, and some- 



Hilly woods, bottomlands times summer itself makes its appearance 



in Illinois before May is half done. Hot 

 weather hurries the migrating birds into the north, speeds leaf-growth 

 on the trees, hastens the spring flowers into olilivion. 



Yet the Illinois May can be slow and cool. It may be a period of 

 soft rains in which the blur of wild crab apple flowers is like wet pink 

 silk, full of the flitting of migrant warblers and tlu' piping of white- 

 throated spaiTows among the leaves. 



May is all these things. And it is the masses of bluebells in the 

 alluvial bottomland woods, there where the creek or the river each year 

 overflows and leaves rich black earth when the water recedes again. Now 

 on a May morning the bluebells in the bottoms are crisp and bright blue, 

 fluted bells with slim tubes and flaring skirts. The 1nids are apple-blossom 

 pink; the expanding flowers are i)urple-rose ; then they are that incom- 

 parable blue which no other flower in Illinois can quite approach. The 

 pale gTeen, thin leaves below these masses of dangling bells are oval and 

 juicy on the stout, watery stems supporting masses of delectable flowers. 



Bluebells grow from black, gnarled brittle roots set deeply in the 

 heavy soil, as well as in the looser soil of wooded hills. The young plants 

 in spring are dull purple; the tiny clusters of pale blue and piirk buds 

 come up with the leaves. The plants (piickly grow, blossom, then the 

 leaves turn yellow, the plants shriv(>l, retreat into the roots, and by 

 summer there is no evidence, among the nettle jungle in the bottoms, of 

 all those spring bluebells so lately gone away. 



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