54 



THE ORNITHOLOGIST AND BOTANIST. 



NOTES FROM WAYNE CO., PA. 



BY A. MAY WALTER, SCRANTON, PA. 



I AM much interested in your bright 

 little journal and in some questions that 

 have come up about our early spring 

 flowers. One question is, "Has anyone 

 else found fragrant hepaticas?" When 

 I read that I should have answered ' 'Yes 

 indeed," but as I had not picked them 

 in any quantity in several years, and as 

 I was then planning a trip to my native 

 place purposely to gather again the early 

 flowers I so delighted in as a child, I 

 thought I would wait, and take careful 

 note so that I might make no mistake in 

 my statements. 



On the 14th of April word was sent me 

 that the hepaticas had come, and on the 

 18th I reached them. I found them in 

 their prime, and all equally fragrant, 

 no ntiatter what their color, blue, white 

 or pink. But not all are equally sweet 

 at all times. The state of the atmos- 

 phere affects them; if cold, and the 

 wind strong it is almost impossible to 

 detect any odor; also when the flowers 

 grow old and get ready to drop their 

 petals they are nearly scentless; but the 

 freshly-opened flowers are sweet, what- 

 ever their color, if the air is at all warm, 

 and when the sun shines, or toward 

 evening as the air becomes moist with 

 dew. And those that seemed scentless 

 in the cool air of ' ■ out-doors " become 

 sweet as well as lovely in the warm air 

 of the house. These hepaticas were 

 found at Prompton, Wayne Co., Pa., 

 and that, you know, is in the most north- 

 east corner of this dear old state. 



Besides hepaticas I found yellow vio- 

 lets, also in full bloom, and it seems to 

 me that they must have appeared as 

 early as the hepaticas. To be sure I did 

 not find these when they first opened, 

 but I think I was informed when they 

 first arrived, April 14th, and on the 18th 

 the yellow violets seemed fully as far 

 advanced as the hepaticas. In a clus- 



ter of either flower I would flnd all, or 

 nearly all of the buds opened, and oc- 

 casionally a flower faded. 



Then when I picked my last bouquet 

 on the 24th I found only now and then 

 one that was not faded, of both hepati- 

 cas and violets. Is it not possible that 

 our poet Bryant mayjiave found, where 

 he picked flowers as a child, the yellow 

 violet at least "one of the first spring 

 flowers?" 



I found white violets when I flrst went 

 out, and at the last, great patches of 

 them, white and sweet, often in the 

 thick moss that grows on knolls in fields, 

 looking like a fairy grove of trees. 

 Large blue violets were in their glory 

 on the 24th. 



Claytonia, or spring beauty, was \evj 

 plentiful, growing in damp hollows in 

 the fields, or in the woods, it made no 

 difference to them. I found the woods 

 fairly carpeted with them high up on a 

 cliff. They look so frail and yet are so 

 hardy. The lovely deer's-corn or squir- 

 rel-corn I found in bud on the 18th and 

 fully blossomed on the 24th. Both kinds 

 grow there, the delicate pinkish-white 

 and the white and yellow. 



It was the same with the purple tril- 

 lium — in bud at first and full bloom later. 

 I find the common names given to it 

 there are "beth-root," "bath-root" and 

 ' ' nose-bleed. " I looked in vain for the 

 painted or white trillium, though I was 

 told the former grows there. 



Adder-tongues were nodding on their 

 stems, unconscious that they are wearing 

 the fashionable color this year. A few 

 anemones with shorter, stiffer stems 

 than I have found them in other locali- 

 ties, the Indian pepper (in bud) and the 

 " colt's-f oot " or "snake-root" wit"h two 

 leaves and a peculiar garnet-colored 

 fiower down close to the root, and a 

 feathery white blossom that we used to 

 call "ground-nut," were the other flow- 

 ers I found. The trailing arbutus does 

 not grow there; it is the land of beech and 

 birch and maple, instead of oak and pine. 



