C 14] 

 HOUSTONIAS 



Apbil 24, 1853. Houstonias. How affecting that, 

 annually at this season, as surely as the sun takes a 

 higher course in the heavens, this pure and simple 

 little flower peeps out and spots the great globe with 

 white in our America, its four little white or bluish 

 petals on a slender stalk making a delicate flower 

 about a third of an inch in diameter! What a sig- 

 nificant, though faint, utterance of spring through 

 the veins of earth ! 



Journal, v, 112. 



May 5, 1860. There are some dense beds of hous- 

 tonia in the yard of the old Conantum house. Some 

 parts of them show of a distinctly bluer shade two 

 rods off. They are most interesting now, before many 

 other flowers are out, the grass high, and they have 

 lost their freshness. I sit down by one dense bed of 

 them to examine it. It is about three feet long and 

 two or more wide. The flowers not only crowd one 

 another, but are in several tiers, one above another, 

 and completely hide the ground, — a mass of white. 

 Counting those in a small place, I find that there are 

 about three thousand flowers in a square foot. They 

 are all turned a little toward the sun, and emit a re- 

 freshing odor. Here is a lumbering humblebee, prob- 

 ing these tiny flowers. It is a rather ludicrous sight. 

 Of course they will not support him, except a little 



