ik. 



BLUE AND PURPLE 



blossoms serve to easily identify it. Under date of June 8th, 

 Thoreau writes : " The lupine is now in its glory. ... It 

 paints a whole hill-side with its blue, making such a field (if not 

 meadow) as Proserpine might have wandered in. Its leaf was 

 made to be covered with dew-drops. I am quite excited by 

 this prospect of blue flowers in clumps, with narrow intervals, 

 such a profusion of the heavenly, the Elysian color, as if these 

 were the Elysian fields. . . . That is the value of the lu- 

 pine. The earth is blued with it." 



HAREBELL. 



Campamila rottindi folia. Campanula Family. 



Stem. Slender, brandling, from five to twelve inches high. Root-leaves. 

 Heart-shaped or ovate, early withering. Stem-leaves. Numerous, long 

 and narrow. Flowers. Bright blue, nodding from hair-like stalks. Calyx. 

 Five-cleft, the lobes awl-shaped. Corolla. Bell-shaped, five-lobed. Sta- 

 mens. Five. Pistil. One, with three stigmas. 



This slender, pretty plant, hung with its tremulous flowers, 

 springs from the rocky cliffs which buttress the river as well as 

 from those which crown the mountain. I have seen the west 

 shore of the Hudson bright with its delicate bloom in June, and 

 the summits of the Catskills tinged with its azure in September. 

 The drooping posture of these flowers protect their pollen from 

 rain or dew. They have come to us from Europe, and are iden- 

 tical, I believe, with the celebrated Scotch bluebells. 



BLUE-EYED GRASS. 



Sisyrinckium angustifolium. Iris Family. 



Four to twelve inches high. Leaves. Narrow and grass-like. Flowers. 

 Blue or purple, with a yellow centre. Perianth. Six-parted, the divisions 

 bristle-pointed. Stamens. Three, united. Pistil. One, with three thread- 

 like stigmas. 



For the sun is no sooner risen with a burning heat, 



But it withereth the grass, 



And the flower thereof falleth, 



And the grace of the fashion of it perisheth. 



So reads the passage in the Epistle of James, which seems so 

 graphically to describe the brief life of this little flower, that we 



241 



