76 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1895. 



lark praised God overhead ; the chubby playmates that never grew to 

 be wicked, the sweet hours of youth — and innocence — and home." 



One never realizes how varied and abundant the local flora is until 

 some special opportunity or special interest leads him to investigate 

 carefully. Then, as the eye sees what it is trained to see or what it 

 is looking for, new and farther reaching vistas are constantly opening. 

 Even when the more conspicuous flowering plants ^re quite fully 

 known, there is a larger world of flowerless forms, such as ferns, 

 lichens, and fungi, and lower still, a world of algae, desmids, diatoms, 

 the portals of which we can enter only with the microscope, where the 

 forms are of exceeding beauty and the problems concerning life are 

 very enchanting. And just as the improvement in telescopes and in 

 methods of photography have shown the existence of many heavenly 

 bodies formerly invisible, it may be that we shall yet learn of vege- 

 table forms still more minute than any yet discovered in which some 

 of the mysteries that surround life may be made more plain. 



The flora of Worcester County, so far as it has been recorded, con- 

 tains 1,098 species and varieties, of which 55 are ferns and their 

 allies. This is an addition of 286 during the last ten years. The 

 record is by no means complete ; in fact, such a record by the nature 

 of the case can hardly be made complete, owing to the constant addi- 

 tions, permanent or casual, which are made through the channels of 

 trade ; e. g., Galinsoga parviflora, Ruiz and Pavon, an immigrant from 

 South America, is making itself at home in various parts of the Uni- 

 ted States, among them our city and county. In the same way, one 

 of the hawkweeds, Hieracium mirantiacum, L., is becoming a pest on 

 lawns in Winchendon. And, again, there are some plants, native but 

 not abundant, at home in deep swamps, which have long escaped 

 notice. I had supposed that of the four species of Gaylussacia, or 

 huckleberry, described in Gray's Manual, only two could probably be 

 foimd in our county, the black huckleberry and the dangleberry, until 

 one day last June, a third species, the dwarf huckleberry, Gaylussacia 

 diimosa, Torrey and Gray, was brought to me from Northboro, where 

 it was reported to be quite abundant. 



Dr. Bigelow in the third edition (1840) of his " Floruhi Bostoui- 

 ensis," mentions only one locality for it, in the edge of Richards' 

 Pond, Brookline ; and G. B. Emerson, in his now classic work on the 

 trees and shrubs of Massachusetts, refers to it as rare, and mentions 

 one locality, Manchester. Both of these authors put it in the genus 

 Vaccinivm, from whence it was transferred by Torrey and Gray to 

 GayhisHacia. It may be of some interest in this connection to recall 



