244 TREES AND FLOWERS. [CHAP. XXXVIII. 



while the cause of science, and the general good of the public, 

 being every body s business, are treated with comparative apathy. 



When I arrived in Virginia, April 29th, I found the woods 

 every where enlivened by the dazzling white flowers, or bracteae, 

 of the dog- wood (Cornus florida), the average height of wliich 

 somewhat exceeds that of our white thorn ; and when, as often 

 happens, there is a back-ground of cedar or pine, the mass of 

 flower is almost as conspicuous as if a shower of snow had fallen 

 upon the boughs. As we sometimes see a pink variety of the 

 wild thorn in England, so there occurs here, now and then, though 

 rarely, a pink dog- wood. Having never remarked this splendid 

 tree in any English shrubbery or park, I had some fine young 

 plants sent home from a nursery to several English friends, and, 

 among others, to Sir William Hooker, at Kew, who was not a 

 little diverted at my zeal for the introduction ef a tree which had 

 been well-established for many years in the British arboretum. 

 But now that I have since seen the dwarfed and shabby repre 

 sentatives of this species in our British shrubberies, I am ready to 

 maintain that it is still unknown in our island. No Virginian, 

 who was not a botanist, could ever recognize it in England as the 

 same plant as the dog- wood of his native land. Yet it is capable 

 of enduring frosts as severe and protracted as are ever experienced 

 in the south of England, and the cause of its flowers not attain 

 ing their full size in our climate, is probably a want of sufficient 

 intensity of light and heat. 



A great variety of oaks were now in leaf in the Virginian 

 forests, among which I observed the white oak, with its leaves 

 in the shape of a violin, and the willow oak, with long and nar 

 row leaves. The ground underneath these trees was adorned 

 with the pink azalea and many other flowers, among the rest the 

 white violet, a species of phlox, and an everlasting Gnaplialium. 



The cedar (Juniperus virginiana) is often covered at this 

 season with what is termed here the cedar apple (Podisoma 

 macropus), supposed by many of the inhabitants to be the flower 

 or fruit of the tree itself. It is a beautiful orange-colored fungus, 

 ornamented with tassels, a very conspicuous object after a shower, 

 but shrinking up if exposed to a day s sunshine. 



