10 AMONG THE WILD-FLOWERS 



from some farmer's door-yard. Patches of it 

 were appearing here and there in the fields, and 

 the farmers were thoroughly alive to the danger 

 and were fighting it like fire. Its seeds are 

 winged like those of the dandelion, and it sows 

 itself far and near. It would be a beautiful 

 acquisition to our midsummer fields, supplying 

 a tint as brilliant as that given by the scarlet 

 poppies to English grain-fields. But it would 

 be an expensive one, as it usurps the land com- 

 pletely. ^ 



Parts of New England have already a mid- 

 summer flower nearly as brilliant and probably 

 far less aggressive and noxious, in meadow 

 beauty, or rhexia, the sole northern genus of a 

 family of tropical plants. I found it very 

 abundant in August in the country bordering 

 on Buzzard's Bay. It was a new flower to me, 

 and I was puzzled to make it out. It seemed 

 like some sort of scarlet evening-primrose. 

 The parts were in fours, the petals slightly 

 heart-shaped and convoluted in the bud, the 

 leaves bristly, the calyx-tube prolonged, etc. ; 

 but the stem was square, the leaves opposite, 

 and the tube urn- shaped. The flowers were 

 an inch across, and bright purple or scarlet. It 

 grew in large patches in dry, sandy fields, mak- 

 ing the desert gay with color; and also on the 

 edges of marshy places. It eclipses any flower 



1 This observation was made ten years ago. T have since 

 learned that the plant is Hieracium aurantiacum from 

 Europe, a kind of hawkweed. It is fast becoming a com- 

 mon weed in New York and New England. 



