Some Spring Days in Iowa | Page 8

of the uplands is spotted with the pure gold of the buttercup. There is no longer need to be satisfied with a few pretty flowers. May scatters her brightest and best in abundance. On the rocky slopes the wild ginger shows its red-brown, long-eared urns, the white baneberry its short white plumes, the branchlets of the bladdernut are breaking into white clusters and columbine soon will "sprinkle on the rocks a scarlet rain" as it did in Bayard Taylor's time, although the "scarlet rain," like that of the painted cup in the lowlands, grows less and less each year. The white glory of the plum thickets at its height and the hawthornes, whose young leaves have been a picture of pink and red, will soon break into blossom and vie with the crabapple thickets in calling attention to the beauty of masses of color when arranged by the Master Painter.
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The carpet of the woodlands grows softer and thicker, and more varied each day. Ferns and brakes are coming thickly. The flowers grow more splendid. The large, wholesome looking leaves of the blue bell are a fitting setting for the masses of bloom which show pink in the bud, then purple, and lastly a brilliant blue. Jack-in-the-pulpits make us smile with keen pleasure as memories of happy childhood days come crowding thickly upon us. The pretty pinnate leaves of the blue-flowered polemonium are sufficient explanation for the common name Jacobs-ladder, even though that name does not properly belong to our species. The purple trilliums, like the Dutchman's breeches, felt the effects of the many April and early May frosts but now they are coming into their beauty. Great colonies of umbrella-leaved May-apple are breaking into white flowers. The broad, lily-like leaves of the true and false Solomon's seal are even more attractive than their blossoms. Ferns, bellwort, wild sarsaparilla, all help to soften our footfalls, while overhead the light daily grows more subdued as the leaf-buds break and the leaves unfold. The throb of the year's life grows stronger. All the blossoms and buds which were formed last summer now break quickly into beauty. And, already, before the year has fairly started, there are signs of preparation for the following year. The dandelion is pushing up its fairy balloons, waiting for the first breeze. The shepherd's purse already shows many mature seeds below its little white blossoms. The keys of the soft maple will soon be ready to fall and send out rootlets, and the winged seeds of the white elm already lie thickly beneath the leafing branches.
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Each flower invites admiration and study. Dig up the root of the Solomon's seal, a rootstock, the botanists call it. It is long, more or less thickened and here and there is a circular scar which marks the place from which former stems have arisen. When these leaf-bearing stems die down they leave on this rootstock down in the ground, a record of their having lived. The scar looks something like a wax seal and the man who gave the plant the name of Solomon's seal had probably read that tale in the Arabian Nights, where King Solomon's seal penned up the giant genie who had troubled the fishermen.
Then there's the May-apple. Who does not remember his childhood days when he pulled the little umbrellas? Even now as they come up in little colonies, they call up memories of the fairy tales of childhood and we almost expect to see a fairy, or a brownie, or Queen Mab herself, coming from under them, when the summer shower, which makes their tops so beautifully moist gray, has passed. And they also bring to mind that charming first edition of Dr. Gray's botany, which had in it much of the man's humor as well as his learning. Too bad that the learned scientists who succeeded him have cut it out. "Common Honesty, very rare in some places," he wrote, speaking of that plant. "Ailanthus, Tree of Heaven, flowers smell of anything but heaven," was his comment on the blossoms of our picturesque importation from China. And when he came to the May-apple he wrote that the sweetish fruit was "eaten by pigs and boys." This made William Hamilton Gibson remember his own boyish gorgings and he wrote: "Think of it boys. And think of what else he says of it: 'Ovary ovoid, stigma sessile, undulate, seeds covering the lateral placenta, each enclosed in an aril.' Now it may be safe for pigs and billy-goats to tackle such a compound as that, but we boys all like to know what we are eating, and I cannot but feel that the public health officials of every township should require this formula of Dr. Gray's to be printed on every one