104 
THE PLANT WORLD. 
EARLY WILD LLOWERS. 
By Wm. Whitman Bailey, 
Professor of Botany in Brown University. 
There is one period of the year when even the most unobservant 
person awakens to some kind of nature love. After the last 
weary days of winter, and this year they have been exasperating, 
the first green things, or budding flowers, are hailed with delight. 
It may not then be amiss to speak, in an informal way, of some 
of these humble companions of our journey, who do so much to 
enliven the way. , 
The earliest of our wild flowers, if anything so small can be 
dignified by the name of flower, is Draba verna , whitlow-grass. 
It is an introduced weed and represents the cress or mustard 
family, the “ cross-bearers ” of the floral procession. Its chief 
charm is in its precocity and endurance of cold. We love any¬ 
thing that dares to brave the winds of March. Our native flowers, 
with few exceptions, put off their appearance in the northern 
states till April or May. * Nature first frolics with tassels, and 
there is method in her madness. Shrubs, like the alder and hazel, 
have their pollen carried by the wind and lo! when they open, the 
wind is on hand to serve them! The skunk-cabbage, however, 
which is freely visited by insects, even by bees, blossoms as soon. 
The may-flower or trailing arbutus, is the earliest pretty flower. 
Ear be it from us to “ gild refined gold or paint the lily,” by adding 
one word to its praise. Poets, good and bad, have sung it; prose 
writers have preached it, “ tamen vivit.” Yet, somehow, despite 
the formal bouquets into' which it is tied up for sale, it charms 
one still. To see it one should visit it in its own home. 
The hepatica holds even a dearer place in our estimation. It 
has not the fragrance of the Epigaect, but is yet not wholly devoid 
of perfume. It possesses a grace and beauty, a piquant liveliness 
all its own. The hepatica, too-, chooses such entrancing surround¬ 
ings, woody dells, and mossy rocks, where the flowers seem to be 
playing hide and seek. 
About the same time there appear the bluets ( Houstonia 
