WEEDS. 
105 
lets, blue, white, and yellow, grow there, with rosy gay-wings,* 
cool-wort, fairy-cup, or mitella, low-cornel, May-star, strawberry, 
dew-drop, bead-ruby, squaw-vine, partridge-plant, pipsissiwa, 
pyrolas, loose-strife, ground-laurel, innocence, Michaelmas-daisies 
of several kinds, perhaps the coptis, or gold-thread, and three or 
four ferns. Such are the plants often found in these wild, posy 
patches, about old stumps, in half-cleared woods. Of course, 
they are not all in flower together ; but toward the prime of the 
spring, one may at times find nearly a dozen kinds in blossom at 
the same moment. These are all native plants, gathering, as if 
out of affection, about the roots of the fallen forest trees. 
Wednesday, Qth. — Coolish this morning. Chilly people have 
lighted their parlor fires. Last year we had strawberries the 6th 
of June, but the present season is more backward. Good walk- 
ing weather to-day. 
It is a pleasing part of the elegance of May, in a temperate 
climate, that few of the coarser weeds show themselves during 
that month ; or, rather, at that early day, they do not appear in 
their true character. They are, of course, very troublesome to 
gardeners from the first, but they do not then obtrude themselves 
upon general attention. The season advances with great rapidity, 
however, and already these rude plants are beginning to show 
themselves in the forms by which we know them. The burdock 
and nettle, and thistle, &c., &c., are growing too plentifully under 
fences, and in waste spots ; duckweed and purslane, &c., (fee, 
* Gay-wings, Poly-gala paucifolia; Cool-wort, Tiarella cordofolia; Fairy-cup, 
Mitella dyjihylla; May-star, Trientalis Americana; Bea'd-ruby, Convallaria 
bifolia; Squaw-vine, Mitchella repens; Partridge plant, Gualtheria; Dew-drop, 
Dalibaraa. 
5* 
