CHARACTERISTIC FLOWERS OF CONCORD. 83 



wild bean twists and twines about Mountain Lane and 

 the road to Pottertown. All the stout, showy flowers 

 are trying to see which shall overtop its neighbor. 

 Meadow-sweet and hardhack, the tick-trefoils and 

 stiektights, sunflowers and elecampane (the latter 's 

 thick, mucilaginous leaves are rather rare about here), 

 milkweeds, turtle-head and Joe-Pye-weed are striving 

 for precedence, while the clematis and the wild balsam- 

 apple make glad the waste places. But the crown of 

 the year, our characteristic August flower, is none of 

 these. It is the gorgeous cardinal lobelia. 



No native flower can vie with the cardinal in vivid 

 coloring. People in other places have waited years to 

 see it. Happily it is rather abundant about Concord ; 

 but, luckily for its own protection, it stands with its 

 feet in the water, and is not easily accessible from the 

 dry land. The brooks and ponds about Birchdale are 

 its favorite haunts, but its intense red spires flame 

 around Batchelder's Mills, and occasionally are seen 

 near the pin-cushion globes of the button-bush along 

 other water-ways. One is not likely to forget the 

 first sight of the cardinal's blinding beauty. I think 

 of that August afternoon when a party of us drove 

 out to Birchdale, and the ecstatic shout that went up, 



