Natural history -- Iowa; Natural history -- Outdoor books
Now the belated April flowers are seen at their best, mingled with many
of the May arrivals. It is such a day as that when Bryant wrote "The Old
Man's Counsel." On the sloping hillsides, around the leafing hazel
"gay-circles of anemones dance on their stalks." In the more open places
the little wind flower, with its pretty leaves and solitary white
blossoms, blooms in cheerful companionship with its fellows, and the more
sterile parts of the hillside are snowed with the white plumes of the
plantain-leaved everlasting. Downy yellow violets and the common blue
violets grow everywhere and down on the sand near the river the birdfoot
violet, with its quaintly cut leaves and handsome blossoms grows
abundantly for the children who love to gather the "sand violets." On the
bottom which was flooded in March the satiny yellow flowers of the marsh
buttercup shine and the beautiful green 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.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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