THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 
21 
golden saxifrages (Saxifraga aizoides and ^. chrysantha.) The 
pink-purple blossoms of Silcne acaidis are plentiful and growing 
fresh and crisp from its bank of snow is Gentiana frigida. All 
these varieties together with Castilleia pallida var occidentalis 
Saxifraga nivalis, Draba, Polygomun and many beside can be 
found on one trip, providing the trip is taken late in August. 
THE BEGINNING OF A SOUTHERN SPRING. 
By Willard N. Clute. 
In southern Louisiana, the transition from Autumn to Spring 
is marked only by the briefest pause where the two seasons meet, 
such as one must expect while the scenes are shifting. Up to the 
very end of the year, a few^ belated asters and goldenrods are to 
be seen, while ten days later the first blossoms of the elm and 
maple are fringing their leafless branches. You may call this 
Winter if you like — there is an occasional frosty night and not in- 
frequently trees bear icicles instead of flowers — ^but the violets 
and chickweed bloom through it all, and down in the warm, moist 
earth a thousand early plants are pushing up ; in fact I am not 
sure that spring has not been lurking there all the while. It 
seems to me that last Autumn I marked the same aspiring points 
of green beneath the aftermath of Summer that are now lengthen- 
ing in the swampy grounds. The city lawns are as green as a 
northern meadow in May and the grass — Poa annua, probably — is 
everywhere in bloom. 
Most noticeable of the early flowering trees is easily Acer 
Drninniondii, the southern counterpart of the northern red maple. 
To call this a red maple, however, but faintly expresses it. The 
red maple is quite pale in comparison. The flowers of the two 
species are nearly alike in color, but the fruit of the southern tree 
is of the deepest and most vivid scarlet, and glows among the 
grays and pale greens of surrounding trees with truly dazzling 
splendor. 
Residents of this part of the world do not know the trailing 
arbutus, for that plant, like a true heath wort, keeps to a colder 
and more rugged land ; but in its stead they have the devil-wood 
