ANTENNARIA PLANTAGINIFOLIA. 



MOUSE-EAR EVERLASTING. 



XATLIkAI. ORDI'lR, COMl'OSrr.K (Astkkack.k ok Lini>i.kv.) 



Antenn.vri.v PLANTAGINIFOLIA, Hook. — Stcm simplc, with procumbent runners at base; 

 radical leaves spatulatc, or elliptic, and three-nerved; corymb clustered; involucral scales 

 greenish. (Darlington's Flora Cestrica. See also Gray's Mauuiil of the Botany of the 

 Northern United States and Wood's Class-Book of Botany.) 



N the early spring few flowers are hailed with more 

 pleasure than the Mouse-Ear Everlasting, or " Pussy's 

 Foot " of the young folks. The plant is by no means handsome, 

 in the ordinary acceptation of the word, but it comes at a season 

 of the year when everything is welcome, and expectations are 

 not very high-strung. In Pennsylvania it is generally in flower 

 in April, and even on warm March days children often go out 

 into the woods and wild places in the hope of finding Pussy's 

 Foot in bloom; and Mr. Brodhead, writing in the "American 

 Naturalist" for 1869, includes it in a list of ten plants which 

 flower earliest of all in Cass County, Missouri. 



In the article just referred to, there are also some very inter- 

 esting figures, showing that the comparative earliness of differ- 

 ent kinds of flowers is not regularly the same every year, and 

 that a season which is favorable to one plant may not be as 

 favorable to another. In the year 1864, for instance, the White 

 Dogs-Tooth Violet, Eryfhroniuni albidum, was in flower as 

 early as the 29th of March, while our Mouse-Ear Everlasting 

 did not open till the 27th of April, or nearly a month later. 

 The next year the Dog's-Tooth Violet did not open before the 

 2d of April, while our plant bloomed fully a week earlier than 



