THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 53 
Here and there among the pines, a change of soil or the shallow 
valley of a meandering brook gives various broad-leaved plants a 
foothold and then one is pretty sure to find the dogwood and 
azale a. The last flowers were falling from these two the first 
week in April, but others are opening further north, and, in fancy, 
we can see this rose-crested wave of white slowly passing north- 
ward until it breaks across the hills of the Middle States a month 
later and goes on to spend itself in Canada. With the dogwood 
blooms the anise-tree (Ilichim Floridamim) whose large starry 
crimson flowers clustering among the dark glossy leaves make the 
copses good to look upon as we marvel at the laws of Nature 
which confines this species close to the Gulf and allows the dog- 
wood the freedom of a continent. A good rich crimson is a 
rare color among American plants and it is all the more surprising 
in the anise-tree when it is known that this is closely related to the 
snowy magnolias. 
Taken at its best, the southern spring compares unfavorably 
with the season a thousand miles further north. Flowers there 
are in plenty, if w^e choose to look for them, but they are never 
scattered with such prodigality as they are in New York or New^ 
England. I have seen nothing to compare W'ith our fields of 
bluets, meadows of buttercups, woods of hepaticas or swamps of 
marsh marigolds. The south is a land of flowers — the number of 
species is large, — but so luxuriantly does everything grow that the 
flowers seem lost among the all-embracing green. In June, in the 
Middle States there comes a lull in the blooming season, this being 
the season when the spring flora ceases and the summer flora be- 
gins. March and April in Southern Louisiana are very much like 
it; one feels that with so' much verdure there ought to- be more 
flowers. 
Tf nature has not done much for New Orleans in the way of 
flowers, she has only made man's w^ork show the better by con- 
trast. Such pansies as have appeared on the lawns during the 
past two months, grow only in an equally moist and genial climate. 
I have never seen anything to approach them in the North. At 
present one sees in cottage gardens whole row^s of red Amaryllis 
