THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 
7 
reddish brown of the anthers. No green leaves appear 
with these first flowers. They are softly curled up 
beneath the dead leaves, waiting lor a warmer time. 
If you dig down around the tender white stem you will 
find at the end of it a round brown tuber covered with 
rootlets. By and by when the vseason is more advanced, 
the stems lengthen, the leaves spread out, and larger 
clusters of the dainty flowers open. They never get very 
high in the world, for the greatest length to which they 
grow is not over eight inches. 
It is not long that the harbinger of spring or pepper- 
and-salt, as it is often called from its brown and white 
appearance, holds sway in the vernal woods. It is soon 
overshadowed by the more sturdy flowers that follow 
— the hepaticas, bloodroots, buttercups and trilliums. 
Once more, in the woods of the early summer, you will 
meet this friend of the early spring. Some day in your 
wanderings, you will chance upon a bank covered with 
fine feathery green leaves surrounding small clusters of 
curved brown seeds. At this time you will find the plant 
still beautiful. When these seeds have fallen the plant's 
work is done, and it sinks drowsily into its long winter's 
rest. You have said goodb^^e for a year to this happy 
little flower, for 
*"Tis my faith that every flower 
Enjoys the air it breathes." 
Barnesville, Ohio. 
A FEW MAINE BLOSSOMS. 
BY JESSIE SWIFT MARTIN. 
N amateur botanist in Maine has been interested 
for 3^ears in noting the location of certain flowers, 
and their absence from certain fields where they would 
be expected. For instance, only once has it ever come 
to the author's knowledge, that meadow beauty {Rhexia 
Virginica) has been found in Androscoggin County. 
That instance was on the shores of Trip Pond in Poland, 
where each midsummer finds the marshy pond edge 
deeply pink from the blossoms. Later, as Thoreau says, 
