98 THROUGH GLADE AND MEAD. 
Pye weed or trumpet-weed (£. purpureum, L.), which 
varies from two to twelve feet in height, and seems to 
fill, in low and moist situations, nearly all the space left 
vacant by the golden-rods, and even to strive with them 
for supremacy. Every gatherer of herbs is familiar 
with the second, well known as thoroughwort (£. per- 
foliatum, L.), and readily distinguished by the fact that 
the leaves are opposite to each other along the stem 
and grow together by their broad bases, encircling it, 
and by its clusters of small white flowers. The hand- 
somest of the three is the white snake-root (£. ager- 
atoides, L..), the flower of which very much resembles 
the Ageratum of the gardens. The three species are 
very conspicuous, both in size and in color, and play 
no insignificant part in forming the great masses of 
color which are the glory of the August flowers. 
More than a dozen species of asters, white, blue, 
and purple, large and small, add to the beauty of the 
flora of this month and the next. They are so numer- 
ous that common names have not been given to them. 
Vying with the golden-rods in abundance, and surpassing 
them in the size of the heads and the variety of colors, 
the asters are among the most highly prized of the late 
summer and autumn flowers. My favorites among 
them are Aster patens, Ait., Aster levis, L., Aster Nove- 
Anglia, L., Aster salicifolius, Ait., and Aster linarit- 
folius, L. 
