MAY-FLOWERS.

BY D. H. HOWARD.

May in this country.

Our flowering season.

MAY is proverbially the month of flowers. The comparison has undoubtedly been made rather with the months which precede than with those which follow it; and in a milder climate than ours. The summer months afford a more abundant variety of flowers than the spring; but the contrast with the stormy season which has just passed, which makes the spring and its flowers so grateful, is wanting to them.

Our New England May has not received, nor justly deserved the praises bestowed upon the vernal months of classic Italy. Ours is an inconstant climate, and our spring is peculiarly so; seeming to delight in intermingling the alternate extremes of summer and winter. But we have bright days, and bright flowers, even in May, though they are few. We thence learn to value them more highly. They are our diamonds, which we only gather here and there, in the sand of the river's bed.

Our flowering season commences about the middle of April-oftener later than earlier; and but a small number of flowers are usually to be obtained, even at the commencement of May. Still, however, the course of the season affords so great a variety that many must be passed lightly over, and we must select the most deserving of a

The violet-its description.

Foreign flowers and names.

place in our catalogue, if such a distinction can be made, in a creation which is all so beautiful as that of the flowers.

We cannot here speak of the snow-drop, the cowslip, the primrose and the daisy, which adorn the green meadows of Old England long before the snow and ice have melted from ours. Our gardens may contain them, stranger nurslings, but our soil knows them not. We may remark here, however, in order to be well understood, that English names have been given to American plants, from imagined resemblance to their original prototypes. So dear to our fathers was everything connected with their home, that they endeavored to find, or to make, everywhere with the flowers, among the rest-associations and remembrances of their native, in their adopted land. Hence many of the duplicate names which perplex the botanical student, meaning one thing across the water, and another thing this side. But let us return to our flowers.

The Violet, justly one of the poets' favorites, is among the earliest and most beautiful gifts of spring. Our meadows furnish a great variety, at this season. All our native species, we believe, are also exclusively American. The garden violet, (Viola tricolor,) called also heartsease, ladies-delight, pansy, &c., may be better known than any wild species; though certainly it is not more beautiful, notwithstanding its great variety of hues. The simple and delicate wild violet, with its purple veins and fringes, will be more charming to any mind that knows how to find beauty in simplicity.

The violet flower consists of five petals, somewhat twisted, and enclosed by five green calyx leaves, behind which projects a spur or nectary-a receptacle of honey. Within the flower will be discovered five short stamens,

Viola cucullata, or meadow violet. Viola ovata, or purple violet.

and one pistil, whence it finds a place in the fifth class, Pentandria, and the first order, Monogynia. Its fruit is a dry three-valved capsule, or seed-vessel.

Prof. Rennie mentions of the violet, that it possesses, like the balsamine, the power of throwing its seeds to a distance, (though by a different mechanism.) He found the seeds of the heartsease, (garden violet,) thrown to the distance of two feet. The valves of the capsule, when they open, exhibit a tendency to roll up-increased, probably by the heat of the sun's rays; and their hard edges, pressing upon the smooth seeds which lie within their cavities, force them out with violence.

The Viola cucullata, or violet with rolled up leaves,— (that is their form when new grown,)—is one of our most common species. It bears a fine, large blue flower, and grows luxuriantly in meadows, and by the side of small brooks. The leaves are heart-shaped, with long, slender footstalks, pringing together with those of the flowers, immediately from the root. After the flowering season, the leaves extend from the size of a dollar to three or four times as large, so that the plant is hardly recognizable for what it was a month before. But this is not peculiar to the violets, and is much more strikingly exhibited in some other plants.

Akin to this, but smaller, is another violet, (Viola ovata,) with blue or rather purple flowers, growing in dry pastures. We have observed in this violet, a singular phenomenon, which is ascribed by Prof. Nuttall, if we remember rightly, to most or all of our violets. During the summer, after the regular flowering season is past, they continue to produce and ripen their seeds without flowering. The apetalous flower is produced, and perfected, apparently, in the form of a bud, but falls away, without ever expanding.

White, yellow, and bird's-foot violets.

Houstonia.

Our meadows are adorned early in spring, with several species of white violets; principally Viola blanda, and Viola lanceolata-possibly varieties of each other. They are fragrant, the former with round and bright green, the other with long and rather slender leaves. The flowers are nodding, like most violets, and veined finely with purple within.

A larger and more beautiful species is the yellow wood violet-Viola pubescens of the botanist. The flower is yellow, with dark purple veins. The stem is stout, and the leaves large and hairy, to which latter circumstance its Latin name is due. We have seen it abundant in the western part of the state, particularly in woods.

But the most singular, if not the most beautiful, of our violets, is the bird's-foot, (Viola pedata.) The name suggests the form of the leaves, which, unlike those of most other violets, are cleft quite to the stem into slender strips, like fingers, or bird's toes. They are pale green, and all radical, or rising from the root. The flowers are large, abundant, and pale blue, with yellow in the centre, but without any veins or stripes. Its favorite soil is dry and sandy. Accordingly, it abounds on the barren uplands which nourish the pine and the wild lupine. It deserves a place in the ornamental garden, where it would show to great advantage.

We have said the violets were among our earliest flowers. Yet, before the first violet's blue eye is open, the fields, in some places, begin to be scattered with the tender flowers of the Houstonia cærulea, looking, as some botanist has graphically remarked, like handfuls of pale premature lilac flowers scattered over the ground. The Latin adjective cærulea, indicates its bluish tint, and the other part of the name (Houstonia) the discoverer. The flower is mostly, however, white, with a yellow

Anemone, or wind-flower.

Hepatica.

centre. Its corolla is monopetalous (formed of one leaf or petal) and tubular, but spreading out four-cleft or cross-form, at top. It is found in the fourth class, Tetrandria, having four stamens, which are so short that the tube of the flower must be torn open to examine them.

At the same time with the violet blooms the Anemonethe beautiful Wind-flower-once fabled to bloom only when the wind blows upon it. We have two species-the Anemone nemorosa, or wood anemone, which we believe some call snow-drop, and some even violet-and the A. thalictroides, taking its name from another plant whose leaves it resembles. The former is the more abundant in this vicinity, being found, indeed, in almost every moist wood and meadow-side. Its petals are five or six, delicately shaded with red; each plant bearing only a single flower. The Anemone thalictroides has from six to a dozen white petals, and numerous flowers on a stem. It is more showy, and hardly less delicate, than the former. Both species may be found on Mount Auburn, as may indeed, very many of the spring flowers we shall mention. The anemone belongs to the class Polyandria, order Polygynia, and is one of those which are destitute of a calyx. Some of the plants of this class and order are decidedly poisonous; and none, probably, are altogether wholesome.

Closely allied to the anemone, and by some placed in the same genus, is the Hepatica, a very early and most delicate blue flower, with six petals, and a little ways below, an involucre of three leaves, which is called by some a calyx. The proper leaves are radical, three-lobed, as though the three leafets of a clover leaf were cemented together by their edges, in the position in which they grow. The old leaves remain green all winter, and the new ones do not sprout till after the flowers. It is found