Bethel to Lakeside
1909.
June 2 [June 2, 1909]
(No 2)
  There were wild flowers in great variety and profusion
all the way, especially above the Notch, and I enjoyed them
exceedingly. The most showy of all were those of the northern
Shad bush (I looked in vain for our common Mass. species). They
were at the very height of their perfection and the roads and
woods edges were lined with their snowy clusters in many places.
Some of the bushes were low and spreading, others small, erect
trees twenty or even thirty feet in height. The hobble bush
and the Canada Plum were also in fullest bloom & very attractive.
Of the small herbaceous plants I saw in flower Actea (probably A. rubra)
hooded violets, dandelions (still in their prime), wake robins,
purple trilliums, houstonia & others. Dog-tooth "violets" were
plentiful in and above the Notch but growing, for the most part,
rather scatteringly although it was not uncommon to pass a
dozen or more of the large yellow blossoms crowded together
within the space of a square yard or less. In the upper
part of the Notch on a low wooded bank bordering the west
side of the road where the soil is rich and rather wet I
was not less surprised than delighted to find Claytonia
and Dicentra (Dutchman's breeches) in great profusion and 
still in fullest bloom. I have never noted either species before
in this region and never before have I seen any where - not 
even in New Jersey or about Washington - a finer display of
the flowers of Claytonia. They formed an unbroken belt
of rose and white stretching along the roadside for a distance
of sixty or seventy yards and back from it from ten to
twenty feet. Here the Dicentra was plentifully intermingled with
these but I did not notice it in another bed of almost equal
extent of Claytonia which we passed a hundred or two yards
further on nor did I afterwards detect either species on
the way to the lake. My driver, Mr. Alfred True, assures me that
Claytonia occurs sparingly in those locations in Bethel. 