A BUNCH OF HERBS. 233 



3dl them, are welcomed by the eye when in late 

 summer they make the swamps and wet, waste places 

 yellow with their blossoms. 



Vervain is a beautiful weed, especially the blue or 

 purple variety. Its drooping knotted threads also, 

 make a pretty etching upon the winter snow. 



Iron- weed ( Vernonia)^ which looks like an over- 

 grown aster, has the same intense purple-blue color, 

 and a royal profusion of flowers. There are giants 

 among the weeds, as well as dwarfs and pigmies. 

 One of the giants is purple eupatorium, which some- 

 times carries its corymbs of flesh-colored flowers ten 

 and twelve feet high. A pretty and curious little 

 weed, sometimes found growing in the edge of the 

 garden, is the clasping specularia, a relative of the 

 harebell and of the European Venus's looking-glass. 

 Its leaves are shell-shaped, and clasp the stalk so as 

 to form little shallow cups. In the bottom of each 

 cup three buds appear that never expand into flowers ; 

 but when the top of the stalk is reached, one and 

 sometimes two buds open a large, delicate purple- 

 blue corolla. All the first-born of this plant are still- 

 born, as it were ; only the latest, which spring from 

 its summit, attain to perfect bloom. A weed which 

 one ruthlessly demolishes when he finds it hiding 

 from the plow amid the strawberries, or under the 

 currant-bushes and grape-vines, is the dandelion ; yet 

 who would banish it from the meadows or the lawns, 

 inhere it copies in gold upon the green expanse the 

 stars of the midnight sky ? After its first blooming 



