38 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 
more hasty climate, but here there is also opulence 
in the matter of time. There is no hurry. The "pret- 
ties," as the children here call all flowers, will linger 
day after day, week after week. Anemones, trilliums, 
ginger, eyebrights, violets, adder's-tongue, blood- 
root, hepaticas, all one's old friends have suddenly 
appeared as well as many a lovely stranger. All 
one's old friends would still be here if one came from 
the South instead of the North, for these mountains 
are a centre for the flora of the different sections of 
the country. 
There are certain flowers whose coming marks an 
era in spring itself, not because of their size or bril- 
liancy, but because of some inherent quality that 
charms. Such a flower is the Iris verna. One thinks 
of the irises as inhabiting wet places, but not so 
this one, which grows everywhere in the dry woods, 
so charming a thing that having seen it one ever 
after associates it with the beauty of these forest 
floors. You watch as eagerly for the first iris as for 
the first arbutus. It is only three or four inches high, 
its color a clear amethyst blue, and besides being 
so lovely to look at, it is perfumed like a hothouse 
violet; that is to say, the variety with a touch of 
orange-yellow near the centre is so perfumed. There 
is one with a white centre, more delicate in color and 
contour than the other, a dream of beauty as one 
looks across gardens of it on some mountain-side, 
but it has no fragrance. 
With the Iris verna appears the bird's-foot violet, 
also in the dry woods and pale violet-blue in color. 
