156. Wild Flowers

THIS has been and is yet a great season for wild flowers; oceans of them line the roads through the woods, border the edges of the water-runlets, grow all along the old fences, and are scatter’d in profusion over the fields. An eight-petal’d blossom of gold-yellow clear and bright, with a brown tuft in the middle, nearly as large as a silver half-dollar, is very common; yesterday on a long drive I noticed it thickly lining the borders of the brooks everywhere. Then there is a beautiful weed cover’d with blue flowers, (the blue of the old Chinese teacups treasur’d by our grand-aunts,) I am continually stopping to admire—a little larger than a dime, and very plentiful. White, however, is the prevailing color. The wild carrot I have spoken of; also the fragrant life-everlasting. But there are all hues and beauties, especially on the frequent tracts of half-open scrub-oak and dwarf-cedar hereabout—wild asters of all colors. Notwithstanding the frost-touch the hardy little chaps maintain themselves in all their bloom. The tree-leaves, too, some of them are beginning to turn yellow or drab or dull green. The deep wine-color of the sumachs and gum-trees is already visible, and the straw-color of the dog-wood and beech. Let me give the names of some of these perennial blossoms and friendly weeds I have made acquaintance with hereabout one season or another in my walks:

wild azalea,

dandelions,

wild honeysuckle,

yarrow,

wild roses,

coreopsis,

golden rod,

wild pea,

larkspur,

woodbine,

early crocus,

elderberry,

sweet flag, (great patches of it,)

poke-weed,

creeper, trumpet-flower,

sun-flower,

scented marjoram,

chamomile,

snakeroot,

violets,

Solomon’s seal,

clematis,

sweet balm,

bloodroot,

mint, (great plenty,)

swamp magnolia,

wild geranium,

milk-weed,

wild heliotrope,

wild daisy, (plenty,)

burdock,

wild chrysanthemum.

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