Some Spring Days in Iowa | Page 4

is the first real herbaceous flower of this spring,
the dwarf white trillium, or wake-robin. How beautiful it looks, its
three pure, waxy-white petals, its six golden anthers and three long
styles, and its pretty whorl of three ovate leaves, at the summit of a

stem about four inches high. A little farther and we find a group of
them and then other clusters, fresh and pure and sweet enough to make
a bouquet for Euphrosyne.
Oh, but someone says, the hepatica is the first flower of spring; all the
nature writers say so. Well, but they don't seem to say much about the
trillium; possibly they haven't found it so often. Indeed, it seems to be
more choice of its location. It is hardly ever, perhaps it would be safe to
say never, found on a southern or a southwestern slope. Almost
invariably it is found on the steep slope of a river bank, facing northeast
or east. Hepaticas nearly always grow on the same slope, but they come
into blossom about two days later than the trillium. But on another
bank which faces the noon and the afternoon sun the hepaticas are up
with the trilliums in the calendar of spring. This year the trillium was
found blooming, on a northeastern slope, March 24. At this place the
hepatica did not bloom until March 26. But it bloomed March 24, on a
southwest slope, fifteen miles away.
By-the-way, the list of March blooming plants for 1908, is probably
one of the longest for years: March 20, aspen; twenty-first, hazel and
silver maple; twenty-third, pussy willow, prairie willow and white elm;
twenty-fourth, dwarf white trillium and hepatica (also known as
liverleaf, squirrelcup, and blue anemone); twenty-fifth, slippery elm,
cottonwood; twenty-ninth, box elder and fragrant sumac; thirtieth,
dandelion; thirty-first, Dutchman's breeches.
How some of these early flowers secure the perpetuation of their
species is an interesting study for amateur botanists. In the case of the
trillium the fruit is a three-lobed reddish berry, but one has to search for
it as diligently as Diogenes did for an honest man before he finds it.
The plant seldom sets seed in this vicinity, but seems to depend rather
upon its tuber-like rootstocks in which the leaves lie curled all through
the winter. The hepatica attracts pollen-feeding flies, female hive-bees
and the earliest butterflies, and is thus cross-fertilized to some extent;
but it is thought also to be able to effect self-fertilization. In the case of
the hepatica acutiloba, however, it has been found that staminate
flowers grow on one plant and pistillate flowers on another, hence

insects are essential to the perpetuation of this species.
After bringing us the trilliums and hepaticas in numbers, Nature pauses.
She means to give us time to inhale the fragrance of some of the
hepaticas, and to learn that other hepaticas of the same species have no
fragrance at all; that there is a variety of delicate colors, white, pink,
purple, lavender, and blue; that the colored parts, which look like petals
are really sepals; that they usually number six, but may be as many as
twelve; that there are three small sessile leaves forming an involucre
directly under the flower; that if we search we shall find some with four,
more rare than four-leaved clovers; that the plant which was fragrant
last year will also be fragrant this year; that the furry stems are slightly
pungent,--enough to give spice to a sandwich; these preliminary
observations fit us for more intricate problems later on.
* * * * *
Spenser, the divinely tongued, pictures April as a lusty youth, riding
upon the bull with the golden horns (Taurus), wading through a flood,
and adorned with garlands of the fairest flowers and buds. A better
figure would have been Europa riding Zeus. And Chaucer also makes
April a masculine month:
"When that Aprille with his schoweres swoote The drought of Marche
had perced to the roote."
But surely April, with her smiles anl[TN-1] tears, ought to be regarded
as a feminine month. Ovid has shown that she was not named from
aperire, to open, as some have supposed, but from Aphrodite, the
Greek name for Venus, goddess of beauty and mother of love. She is
chaste, even cold, but grows sweeter and more affectionate every day
and her tears all end in smiles. Her flowers are pure and mostly white,
fitting for a maiden. Look at the list (if the weather is warm):
White or whitish:--Rue-anemone, hepatica, spring beauty, blood-root,
toothwort, Dutchman's breeches, dog's tooth violet, wild ginger,
chickweed, Isopyrum, plantain-leaved everlasting, shepherd's purse,
shad-bush, wild strawberry, whitlow-grass, wind-flower, hackberry

(greenish white), false Solomon's seal, catnip, spring cress, wild black
currant, wild plum.
Yellow or yellowish:--Marsh marigold, creeping buttercup, marsh
buttercup, small-flowered crowfoot, dandelion, yellow woodsorrel,
bell-wort, star-grass, downy yellow