MIDSUMMER FLOWER-HUNTS 



BY R. W. SHUFELDT, M. D., R. A. O. U., ETC. 



MAJOR, MEDICAL CORPS, U. S. ARMY, MEMBER OF THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF FLORENCE, ITALY, ETC. 



IT matters little where we hunt for wild flowers in the 

 open ; in fact, no city is so big but what it has its 

 environs and beyond. Where the essential part 

 comes in is where the searcher possesses the eyes to see 

 the flowers when they are to be seen. Often little grassy 

 courtyards, fifteen by fif- 

 teen feet, are veritable 

 "nature gardens," where a 

 sufficient number of wild 

 flower specimens are grow- 

 ing to furnish material for 

 an hour's talk on urban 

 botany to a class of grown- 

 ups, or to hold a bunch of 

 kiddies under a spell for an 

 equal length of time. There 

 is a courtyard of that kind, 

 and of just such dimensions, 

 within fifty feet of the table 

 upon which this article is 

 being written, of exactly 

 the sort I have in mind. 

 Here it is in the month of 

 August, and this little gras- 

 sy square, fenced nearly all 

 about with a board fence, 

 overgrown with grape-vine 

 and Virginia creeper, has 

 had blooming in it during 

 the summer some ten or 

 fifteen different kinds of 

 wild flowers. To be sure, 

 some of these have been in- 

 troduced, while others have 

 grown up from seeds which 

 have either blown in there, 

 or been dropped by the few 

 birds that occasionally light 

 on the telephone wire pass- 

 ing over it. For the most 

 part the list contains dai- 

 sies, columbine, chrysogo- 

 num, dandelions, showy or- 

 chids, wild geranium, two 

 species of clover, yarrow, 

 violets, sorrel, Virginia day-flower, trumpet-vine, deadly 

 nightshade, jack-in-the-pulpit and devil's bit. Doubtless 

 there may be three or four others of the tiny kind, which 

 might be found upon closer search. Now, if this be true 

 of a little city yard, what a wealth of nature-stuff there 

 must and in fact there really is within twenty minutes' 

 ride upon any of the outgoing trolley-cars to the city's 

 environs. Of this there is no better example than our 



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< ?tz kjc/i . Se-nn ' 'hoii/p: itU an/ O oo. 



ONE OF THE GREATEST FIGURES IN THE BOTANICAL WORLD 



Fig. 4 Carolus Linnaeus, of whom this is a portrait, was 

 botanist and zoologist. He was about forty-one years 

 painting was made of htm. 



beautiful National Capital Washington. In fact, Wash- 

 ington offers particularly attractive inducements to those 

 who may be interested in our native wild flowers and 

 animals, and desire to study them in nature. Yes, in 

 nature ; for almost anywhere within three miles or less 



of Washington one may 

 readily find beautiful plants 

 and trees and shrubs, thriv- 

 ing and blossoming in all 

 of their pristine wildness, 

 just as they did in the days 

 when our great general of 

 the Revolution had his 

 home at Mount Vernon ; or 

 earlier yet, long before the 

 invaders from the Old 

 World came hither, when 

 the red-skinned sons of the 

 soil plied their canoes of 

 bark along the banks of the 

 Potomac. 



Where protected by 

 masses of rock and miry 

 marshland, certain stretches 

 of these banks, even on the 

 north side of the river, are 

 in no particular different 

 from what they were cen- 

 turies ago. To say five cen- 

 turies ago would by no 

 means be a stretch of the 

 imagination; for amorphous 

 rock is tough, and where it 

 stands amidst the less stable 

 banks of a somewhat rapid 

 river, little change is to be 

 looked for along the water 

 line, or where land and 

 water see their definition 

 during the rise and fall of 

 the tides of the ages. 



Along the river, almost 

 directly opposite the city, 

 or short distances either 



l world-famous 

 aid when this 



above or below, there are 

 such places in plenty, either along the banks be they of 

 marsh, meadow or rock where old Virginia finds its 

 northern boundary, or on the other side where the District 

 and Maryland terminate on the south. Somewhere in 

 the latter locality there is to be found a place where we 

 may still find growing, in all of its native wildness, the 

 wild senna, with its rich yellow flowers, which, in some 

 specimens, come very close to being of a brilliant 



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