As I turned from the shades of Wildmont, I walked toward Crystal Lake, along a dry brook bed. Here, indeed, I found a Cardinal show; over a hundred spikes of that brilliant flower danced before my eyes and lighted up the glooms. I had never before seen such flowers as these. The Cardinal-Flower (_Lobelia cardinalis_) is not frequent in Hoosac Valley—at least I have never collected it there. John Burroughs writes of it: “It is not so much something colored as it is color itself.”[60] I gathered many spikes of this flaring colored flower, and passed out to the shore of the lake; children, with their sailboats, ran teasingly after me, until I escaped to a quiet retreat where ice-cream was served. The waiter and the children alike were strangely unfamiliar with this flower, growing so close to their homes. I passed out over the rocky slopes northward, where I ate huckleberries to my heart’s content. The ghost-like Feathery Plumes, and common Purple Clubs of this region towered everywhere among the woods; and low beautiful plants of the Yellow Gerardia were in full bloom. As I rounded the slope, below the Rock, I collected a fine specimen of the gorgeously colored Orange Butterfly-Weed, or Pleurisy-Root (_Asclepias tuberosa_), of the Milkweed Family. In the swamp farther south on the Orange Mountains, I have formerly collected the Swamp Milkweed flowers, which are similar to Butterfly-Weed, save that they are of a delicate rose-purple color. Our common species northward is the Purple-Flowered Silkweed. It grows along our roadside walls and river banks, and its tender leaves are used as greens, proving very delicious food. I sat some time on the hillside under Eagle Rock, recalling the various flowers collected along the Northfield Road the year past. Llewellyn and Hutton Parks, along these summits, are always fragrant with blossoms in May and June. I once spent a holiday in Pleasant Valley beyond St. Cloud, in May and June, collecting among other flowers the beautiful Tulip-Tree blossoms (_Liriodendron Tulipifera_), which some lads graciously gathered for me. The swamps and woods about this vale produce about the same species of flowers and trees as the hills of Mosholu and Lowerre above New York City—marsh marigolds, violets, anemones, dogwoods, and glowing apple orchards that one does not soon forget. One rare flower, however, graces the Orlando Williams Swamp in Pleasant Valley that I find nowhere else. It is the Painted-Cup (_Castilleja coccinea_) of the Figwort Family. It is very similar to the Scarlet Painted-Cup that Bryant wrote about as growing on the prairies.[61] [Illustration: =The Star-blossoms of the Grass of Parnassus= (_Parnassia Caroliniana_), =and the Ladies’ Tresses.=]