CHAPTER III 

 THE COLOUR OF THE YOUNG YEAR 



My spring appears, Oh see what here doth grow. 



— Sidney. 



EVEN a careless observer cannot but be aware that 

 in the floral world certain colours predominate at 

 certain seasons. In the early spring a distinct 

 majority of the flowers are yellow and even the young 

 leafage is instinct with yellow principle. Thoreau says 

 that "the spring yellows are faint, cool, innocent as the 

 saffron morning as compared with the blaze of noon," and 

 most of these spring yellows have an ascid cast like the 

 colour of the Winter Aconite, though there is no hint of 

 this sharpness in the radiant, light-suggesting petals of 

 Daffodils. These radiant and ascid yellows are in wonder- 

 ful harmony with the pale young leafage, while the delicately 

 enveloping spring light seems to draw them all into a soft 

 illumination to honour the season of renewals and fresh hope. 

 Several trees and shrubs give their flowers before winter 

 has quite gone from the world. Folk so fortunate as to be 

 in the country in very early spring know the shapely Spice 

 Bush (Benzoin aestivale), and welcome it as a friend. 

 Harriet Keeler writes that it "begins and ends its sylvan 

 year in yellow." The little greenish-yellow flowers, so 



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