YELLOW AND ORANGE WILD FLOWERS 
shaded, this charming little aristocrat of violetdom 
makes its home. When the warmth of the earliest 
April showers has dissolved the frost crystals about 
their roots, and while the belated, cold, damp-laden 
winds are yet contesting the supremacy of the bright, 
ever-warming sunshine, the pale yellow flowers bear 
silent witness to the conflict. And so William Cullen 
Bryant found it: 
“When beechen buds begin to swell, 
And woods the bluebirds’s warble know, 
The yellow violet’s modest bell 
Peeps from the last year’s leaves below.” 
Occasionally I have found the earliest flowers of the 
Round-leaved Violet only after brushing aside the 
loose blanket of bleached oak-leaves, which hid them 
from sight. Their flower and leaf stems are rather 
short, and the blossoms seem to be contented ,with a 
sheltered chink between the fallen leaves, without 
forcing their way above them, as they do later in the 
season. During the spring months, while in flower, 
the plant is quite small and without an abundance of 
foliage. The early leaves measure from one-half to 
two inches broad, but they continue to expand, until 
by midsummer they have increased in size to three 
or four inches, and form a pretty rosette, flattened 
against the ground, or very near it. The matured 
leaf is rounded, with a short cleft between two lobes, 
forming a heart-shaped structure. The upper sur- 
face is smooth, very, shiny, and dark green in colour. 
The under surface is lighter in colour, and the general 
150 
