FAR AND NEAR 



flower no longer, but a receptacle packed with 

 ripening seeds. 



A relative of the daisy, the orange-colored hawk- 

 weed {Hieracium aurantiacum) , which within the 

 past twenty years has spread far and wide over 

 New York and New England, is often at the height 

 of its beauty in August, when its deep vivid orange 

 is a delight to the eye. It repeats in our meadows 

 and upon our hilltops the flame of the columbine of 

 May, intensified. The personified August with these 

 flowers in her hair would challenge our admiration 

 and not our criticism. Unlike the daisy, it quickly 

 sprouts again when cut down with the grass in the 

 meadows, and renews its bloom. Parts of New Eng- 

 land, at least, have a native August flower quite as 

 brilliant as the hawkweed just described, and far 

 less a usurper; I refer to meadow-beauty, or rhexia, 

 found near the coast, which suggests a purple 

 evening primrose. 



Nature has, for the most part, lost her delicate 

 tints in August. She is tanned, hirsute, freckled, like 

 one long exposed to the sun. Her touch is strong 

 and vivid. The coarser, commoner wayside flowers 

 now appear, — vervain, eupatorium, mimulus, the 

 various mints, asters, golden-rod, thistles, fireweed, 

 mulleins, motherwort, catnip, blueweed, turtle- 

 head, sunflowers, clematis, evening primrose, lobe- 

 lia, gerardia, and, in the marshes of the lower Hud- 

 son, marshmallows, and vast masses of the purple 

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