Magenta to Pink 



Flowering Season — March — May. 



Distribution — Newfoundland to Florida, west to Kentucky, and 

 the Northwest Territory. 



Can words describe the fragrance of the very breath of spring 

 — that delicious commingling of the perfume of arbutus, the odor 

 of pines, and the snow-soaked soil just warming into life ? Those 

 who know the flower only as it is sold in the city streets, tied 

 with wet, dirty string into tight bunches, withered and forlorn, 

 can have little idea of the joy of finding the pink, pearly blossoms 

 freshly opened among the withered leaves of oak and chestnut, 

 moss, and pine needles in which they nestle close to the cold 

 earth in the leafless, windy northern forest. Even in Florida, 

 where broad patches carpet the woods in February, one misses 

 something of the arbutus's accustomed charm simply because 

 there are no slushy remnants of snow drifts, no reminders of 

 winter hardships in the vicinity. There can be no glad surprise 

 at finding dainty spring flowers in a land of perpetual summer. 

 Little wonder that the Pilgrim Fathers, after the first awful winter 

 on the "stern New England coast," loved this early messenger of 

 hope and gladness above the frozen ground at Plymouth. In an 

 introductory note to his poem " The Mayflowers," Whittier states 

 that the name was familiar in England, as the application of it to 

 the historic vessel shows ; but it was applied by the English, and 

 still is, to the hawthorn. Its use in New England in connection 

 with the trailing arbutus dates from a very early day, some claim- 

 ing that the first Pilgrims so used it in affectionate memory of the 

 vessel and its English flower association. 



" Sad Mayflower ! watched by winter stars, 

 And nursed by winter gales, 

 With petals of the sleeted spars, 

 And leaves of frozen sails ! 



" But warmer suns ere long shall bring 

 To life the frozen sod, 

 And through dead leaves of hope shall spring 

 Afresh the flowers of God ! " 



Some have attempted to show that the Pilgrims did not find 

 the flowers until the last month of spring, and that, therefore, 

 they were named Mayflowers. Certainly the arbutus is not a 

 typical May blossom even in New England. Bryant associates it 

 with the hepatica, our earliest spring flower, in his poem, "The 

 Twenty-seventh of March " : 



" Within the woods 

 Tufts of ground laurel, creeping underneath 

 The leaves of the last summer, send their sweets 

 Upon the chilly air, and by the oak, 

 The squirrel cups, a graceful company 

 Hide in their bells a soft aerial blue." 



