The Writings of John Burroughs — Volume 05: PepactonBurroughs, John
History
The Writings of John Burroughs — Volume 05: Pepacton
Burroughs, John
Natural history -- Outdoor books
In like manner one learns where to look for arbutus, for
pipsissewa, for the early orchis; they have their particular
haunts, and their surroundings are nearly always the same. The
yellow pond-lily is found in every sluggish stream and pond, but
NYMPHÆA ODORATA requires a nicer adjustment of conditions, and
consequently is more restricted in its range. If the mullein were
fragrant, or toadflax, or the daisy, or blue-weed, or goldenrod,
they would doubtless be far less troublesome to the agriculturist.
There are, of course, exceptions to the rule I have here indicated,
but it holds in most cases. Genius is a specialty: it does not
grow in every soil; it skips the many and touches the few; and the
gift of perfume to a flower is a special grace like genius or like
beauty, and never becomes common or cheap.
"Do honey and fragrance always go together in the flowers? "Not
uniformly. Of the list of fragrant wild flowers I have given, the
only ones that the bees procure nectar from, so far as I have
observed, are arbutus, dicentra, sugar maple, locust, and linden.
Non-fragrant flowers that yield honey are those of the raspberry,
clematis, sumac, white oak, bugloss, ailanthus, goldenrod, aster,
fleabane. A large number of odorless plants yield pollen to the
bee. There is nectar in the columbine, and the bumblebee sometimes
gets it by piercing the spur from the outside as she does with
dicentra. There ought to be honey in the honeysuckle, but I have
never seen the hive-bee make any attempt to get it.
WEEDS
One is tempted to say that the most human plants, after all, are
the weeds. How they cling to man and follow him around the world,
and spring up wherever he sets his foot! How they crowd around his
barns and dwellings, and throng his garden and jostle and override
each other in their strife to be near him! Some of them are so
domestic and familiar, and so harmless withal, that one comes to
regard them with positive affection. Motherwort, catnip, plantain,
tansy, wild mustard,--what a homely human look they have! they are
an integral part of every old homestead. Your smart new place will
wait long before they draw near it. Or knot-grass, that carpets
every old dooryard, and fringes every walk, and softens every path
that knows the feet of children, or that leads to the spring, or to
the garden, or to the barn, how kindly one comes to look upon it!
Examine it with a pocket glass and see how wonderfully beautiful
and exquisite are its tiny blossoms. It loves the human foot, and
when the path or the place is long disused, other plants usurp the
ground.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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