From Blue to Purple 



" There are many things left for May," says John Burroughs, 

 "but nothing fairer, if as fair, as the first flower, the hepatica. 

 I find I have never admired this little firstling half enough. When 

 at the maturity of its charms, it is certainly the gem of the 

 woods. What an individuality it has! No two clusters alike; 

 all shades and sizes. ... A solitary blue-purple one, fully 

 expanded and rising over the brown leaves or the green moss, its 

 cluster of minute anthers showing like a group of pale stars on 

 its little firmament, is enough to arrest and hold the dullest eye. 

 Then, . . . there are individual hepaticas, or individual fami- 

 lies among them, that are sweet scented. The gift seems as 

 capricious as the gift of genius in families. You cannot tell which 

 the fragrant ones are till you try them. Sometimes it is the 

 large white ones, sometimes the large purple ones, sometimes 

 the small pink ones. The odor is faint, and recalls that of the 

 sweet violets. A correspondent, who seems to have carefully 

 observed these fragrant hepaticas, writes me that this gift of odor 

 is constant in the same plant; that the plant which bears sweet- 

 scented flowers this year will bear them next." 



It is not evident that insect aid is necessary to transfer the 

 tiny, hairy spiral ejected from each cell of the antherid, after it has 

 burst from ripeness, to the canal of the flask-shaped organ at 

 whose base the germ-cell is located. Perfect flowers can fertilize 

 themselves. But pollen-feeding flies, and female hive bees which 

 collect it, and the earliest butterflies trifle about the blossoms when 

 the first warm days come. Whether they are rewarded by finding 

 nectar or not is still a mooted question. Possibly the papillae which 

 cover the receptacle secrete nectar, for almost without exception 

 the insect visitors thrust their proboscides down between the 

 spreading filaments as if certain of a sip. None merely feed on the 

 pollen except the flies and the hive bee. 



The Sharp-lobed Liver-leaf (Hepatica acuta) differs chiefly 

 from the preceding in having the ends of the lobes of its leaves 

 and the tips of the three leaflets that form its involucre quite 

 sharply pointed. Its range, while perhaps not actually more 

 westerly, appears so, since it is rare in the East, where its cousin 

 is so abundant; and common in the West, where the round-lobed 

 liver-leaf is scarce. It blooms in March and April. Professor 

 Halsted has noted that this species bears staminate flowers on 

 one plant and pistillate flowers on another; whereas the Hepatica 

 Hepatica usually bears flowers of both sexes above the same root. 

 The blossoms, which close at night to keep warm, and open in 

 the morning, remain on the beautiful plant for a long time to ac- 

 commodate the bees and flies that, in this case, are essential to the 

 perpetuation of the species. 



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