THE FROST- FLOWER 211 



Canadense. It is richly endowed with blossoms three 

 sorts, in truth. One bright showy one of July, which 

 soon withers, followed in August and September by 

 thousands of others on each plant, though no one would 

 guess it, so minute are they; and again, now in No- 

 vember, the third and quaintest blossom of them all. 



The July blossom is indicated in my illustration. It 

 is bright yellow, about an inch across, with its stamens 

 flatly pressed against the petals, and two or three are 

 occasionally in bloom at once. The November flower 

 is also shown in my panel picture the flower from 

 which the plant is named, but which few people ever 

 see. Almost any morning during the past week, after a 

 severe frost, would have shown it to us among the 

 stubble where the plants are known to grow, glistening 

 like specks of white quartz down among the brown 

 herbage close to the base of the stem. 



It is a flower of ice crystal of purest white which 

 shoots from the stem, bursting the bark asunder, and 

 fashioned into all sorts of whimsical feathery curls and 

 flanges and ridges. It is often quite small, but some- 

 times attains three inches in height and an inch or more 

 in width. It is said to be a crystallization of the sap of 

 the plant, but the size of the crystal is often out of all 

 proportion to the possible amount of sap within the 

 stem, and suggests the possibility that the stem may 

 draw extra moisture from the soil for this special occa- 

 sion. The frost -flower is well named. 



