304 FLOWERS OF FIELD, HILL, AND SWAMP 



The juices of this plant, talcen internally, are dangerous. If the 

 root be held awhile in the mouth it is said to cause a flow of 

 cold, watery liquid from the nose. 



5. Rue Anemone 



Anemonella thalictroldes is often confounded with the 

 wood-anemone. It also bears thin involucral leaves on the 

 stem near the flowers, but rounder, less divided, and more 

 heart-shaped at base, and others from the root, similar. The 

 smaller flowers are several in number, rarely anything but 

 pure white; occasionally rosy-hued. 4 to 9 inches high. 



A delicate beauty, both in its foliage and flowers, growing from 

 a cluster of tubers (like miniature dahlia roots), quickly withering 

 after being picked. If one wants a bit of the woods transplanted 

 to the house, they maybe taken carefully up by the roots and set 

 in a saucer of moss. For table decoration there can be nothing 

 daintier. 



6. Liver-leaf. Hepatica (See Frontispiece) 



Hepaiica irfloba ("liver," from shape of leaf). — Family, 

 Crowfoot. Color, pale blue or bluish white, or with a delicate 

 trace of pink. Leaves, from the root, purple or mottled with 

 purple, 3-lobed, heart-shaped at base, roundish in outline, 

 leathery, evergreen. Time, early spring. 4 to 6 inches high. 



Petals, none. Sepals, petal-like, colored, 6 to 12 ; directly 

 beneath is an involucre of 3 small, roundish, calyx-like leaves. 



When the plant first comes the brown leaves of the last sum- 

 mer are all the foliage it has, the new leaves appearing later than 

 the flower. Buds and stem very hairy. One of our best-loved 

 flowers, partly because one of the first. Mr. Gibson considers it 

 the earliest. He says : " When I picked my arbutus in February, 

 and when Burroughs and Dr. Abbott gathered their claytonias, 

 the latter in February, we could doubtless all have found our 

 hepatica too ; and I am equally confident that my early blooms of 

 rock-flower and everlasting were never so early as to have stolen 

 a march on the liverworts. 



