Flowers and Gardens 



Hawthorn. The Hawthorn first clothes 

 itself in full array of green, and then puts 

 its blossoms forth, loading its branches 

 with the fragrant snow, till the long lines 

 of distant hedge seem like billows tumb- 

 ling over into foam. And when we break 

 off a branch how lovely the blossoms are, 

 each with its rounded petals — a little ring 

 of pearls, and lovely most of all, the half- 

 opened buds, which shine in the light 

 like little balls of silver. And then that 

 sweet and hay-resembling fragrance, what 

 delightful thoughts does it recall of May 

 days in the past ! But what a difference 

 between the Hawthorn and the Sloe! In 

 this last, the flowers are irregularly scat- 

 tered instead of being bound up into 

 these dense, well-compacted corymbs of 

 the Hawthorn blossom. The smell is 

 faint, bitter, and disagreeable ; and there 

 is a comparative harshness in the stamens 

 and centre of the blossom. The anthers 

 soon burst, and then all beauty disappears, 

 for the stamens look loose and disorderly. 

 But the most important difference lies in 

 the configuration of the petals. The 

 Hawthorn blossoms have a compactly 

 rounded make, and the petals of each 

 flower are individually round and hollow, 



and are set in the ring as accurately as 



72 



