82 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1895. 



not be expected later in the season, when the other shrubs and trees 

 are in full leafage. With the shad-bush we associate the troop of 

 violets, five or six species of which may easily be found in the early 

 May days. 



Not many of the earlier flowers of the year are classed among the 

 weeds. The weeds start early enough, but realizing that they have 

 all summer and autumn to ripen in, they do not hurry to bloom. 

 Perhaps they escape notice and many mishaps by lying low until the 

 more useful vegetation has attained a sufficient growth to overshadow 

 and protect them. 



The most conspicuous weed of spring is the dandelion. Its mode 

 of growth is worth more than a passing notice. In the animal world 

 it would seem to imply a great deal of instinct or inherited memory, 

 or whatever we choose to call it. It opens its flowers at first on a 

 short scape or flower-stem, which lengthens during blossoming. After 

 all the flowers have been expanded long enough to ensure fertilization, 

 the inner involucre closes, and the cells on one side of the stem con- 

 tract, drawing it down almost to the ground. In this position the 

 fruit ripens, and at the same time the slender beak of the achenes elon- 

 gates, carrying up with it the crown of soft white hairs. When 

 everything is ready for the distribution of the fruit, the cells of the 

 stem expand, the stem stands erect, the involucre is reflexed, and the 

 achenes or seed-like fruits, with the pappus displayed in an open 

 globular head, are ready to be carried by the lightest wind to form 

 a colony away from the parent plant. 



Within a week of each other, sometimes before the middle of May, 

 the shepherd's purse and the low spear grass will be found in bloom, 

 perhaps both close together. I look at them with an added interest 

 since I read Sir J. D. Hooker's "Himalayan Journals" a few years 

 ago. The following quotation contains one of the best expressions 

 of the delights of scientific travel, and that shall be my excuse for 

 quoting it in full. 



He is writing under date of November 25th, 1848, on one of the 

 passes of the Himalayas in East Nepaul, at an elevation of 13,000 

 feet. He says: "Along the narrow path I found the two com- 

 monest of all British weeds, a grass (Poa annua) and the shepherd's 

 purse. They had evidently been imported by man and yaks, and as 

 they do not occur in India, I could not but regard these little wanderers 

 from the north with the deepest interest. Such incidents as these 

 give rise to trains of reflection in the mind of the naturalist traveller; 

 and the farther he may be from home and friends, the more wild and 



