Part 13

A January has probably never yet been known during which it was impossible to find out of doors a daisy (_Bellis perennis_) in flower: not in the open meadow, or on the cold slope of the hillside, but at least in some sheltered nook where a streamlet may flow, unhindered by frost. Says Montgomery:

“On waste and woodland, rock and plain, Its humble buds unheeded rise; The rose has but a summer reign, The daisy never dies.”

And this last line explains the true meaning of the specific botanical name of the day’s “eye”—_perennis_—which does not mean, as it is usually understood in botanical language, “perennial,” simply to indicate that the daisy _plant_ lives beyond a period of two years. It means “lasting throughout the year,” that is to say, lasting in _blossom_ throughout the year, for our daisy is _always_ in bloom somewhere.

Another January flower, and one whose blossoms, though it is an annual plant, may be found throughout the year, is the purple dead nettle (_Lamium purpureum_).

Though much like its relative, the later-blooming white or common dead nettle, this pretty plant may be known from _Lamium album_, not only by the purple color of its curious flowers, a color with which its leaves and its leaf-hairs are sometimes suffused, but by its smaller size and by the curious crowding of its alternately-paired heart-shaped leaves on the upper part of the stem, a feature which is not common to its white-flowering congener. The unobservant pedestrian who may linger by the wayside to pluck something which strikes his fancy in the low hedgebank, must often have dreaded the touch of the harmless dead nettles, under the belief that these plants were the widely different, though similarly leaved, “stinging” nettles. If disabused of this impression and induced to handle a flowering stem of the purple dead nettle, with square stem and whorl of stalkless axillary blossoms, he will marvel at the singular-looking corolla, separated from its calyx of five sepals. The generic name _Lamium_ comes from a Greek word which means throat, and that, as referring to the blossom, it is aptly applied, will be seen at once. From the depths of this throat, or the corolla tube, in other words, rise the stamens on their long filaments, covered by the upper and concave lip of the corolla, which hangs hood-like over them, whilst the lower lip (for this species belongs to the large natural order called _Labiatæ_, labiate or lip-flowered plants) is prettily marked with spots of darker purple than the normal color of the blossom.

Though the most we can do with the winter aconite (_Eranthis hyemalis_) is to rank it among our doubtful wild flowers, we must at least give it “honorable mention,” noticing its whorl of green leaves at the apex of its solitary stem and its large, yellow, handsome blossom, for it is among the hardy little group of plants which flower the nearest in point of time to the first day of the new year.

We must not fail to allude in our enumeration of early January flowers to that sweet little plant, the wild heartsease, or pansy (_Viola tricolor_), the progenitor of its host of garden namesakes. Its natural tendency to vary in the color as well as in the size of its blossoms, under varying conditions of growth, will explain the ease with which it can be made subservient to culture. Had it no beauty of its own, its relationship to the violets would claim for it our love and regard; but it is a flower which can not be passed over, for it seems to look at us out of its yellow and darkly-empurpled face with a sort of thoughtful earnestness.

The hellebores come within our enumeration of the January flora, and of these the bearsfoot or fœtid hellebore (_Helleborus fœtidus_) is the earliest in flower. It grows to a height oftentimes of two feet. Its smooth stem and leaves are dark green; its leaves narrowly lanceolate, serrated along the edges toward their apices. The large flowers are cuplike, are produced in panicles, or branched clusters, and are light yellowish green in color, the cluster of yellow-anthered stamens forming a conspicuous center to each corolla. Every part of the bearsfoot is highly poisonous, but the plant pleases the eye by its striking and handsome form.

It must naturally follow that exceptional hardiness is indicated by capacity to blossom in January. But among all our early flowering plants, there are two which may fairly claim the possession of an especial character for robustness of constitution; for, whilst those we have already mentioned are more or less susceptible to the influence of cold, and some of them will only produce their early blossoms in sheltered nooks, the two we are about to notice can bravely withstand hard frosts in exposed situations.

Of these, the first we shall name is the common groundsel (_Senecio vulgaris_), and a hardier little plant than this, of its kind, it would be scarcely possible to find. We have seen it in flower in the early part of January, when every stream, pond, and ditch around was frozen almost to the bottom, its soft leaves looking as fresh and glossy as if it had been the height of summer. The groundsel is a member of a little group which includes the ragworts, and they all bear yellow blossoms, and have a strong family likeness. _Senecio vulgaris_ really flowers all the year round, and that is why we have it so conveniently among our early January blossoms. That it is so plentiful and so hardy is a wise provision of nature; for its leaves, the florets of its blossoms, and its seeds are very welcome additions to the food of our small birds, who have at least this provision for their comfort during the rigors of our frosts.

The other little wildling of the two we have especially mentioned as being among the hardiest even of the hardy January flora is the common chickweed (_Stellaria media_), a pretty little plant, which, because of its marvelous power of reproduction, and its persistency in intruding within the prim domain of the gardener, is by the last named individual regarded with feelings of bitter enmity, and is mercilessly exterminated whenever it comes into the realm of graveled path and nicely-kept border. Very different are the feelings of the small birds toward the chickweed, for it furnishes them with food which is eagerly sought after and keenly appreciated. Its power of branching and spreading is really marvelous, and it seems almost to lead a charmed life, for the most persevering attempts to uproot and banish it from the ground whereon it has once fairly established itself, ordinarily fail. We have said that its flowers are pretty, but perhaps some unobservant and unreflecting people hardly credit it with the production of blossom, for the minute, oblong, white petals are so much hidden by the green five-cleft calyx which is oftentimes larger than the corolla, entirely enveloping them when in bud, that they are inconspicuous among the mass of spreading green.

And now we have reached, in our pleasant task of enumerating our earliest wild flowers, the delicate and beautiful snowdrop (_Galanthus nivalis_), the botanical name indicating a milk-white blossom; and though it can scarcely claim to take a place as

“The first pale blossom of the ripening year,”

it may be sometimes seen in bloom before the middle of January. Have the incurious and unobservant noticed more about this beautiful flower than that it is white and drooping, and early in appearing, and, of course, pretty? We fancy not. Yet this delicate white blossom will well repay careful and searching examination.

The advent of a buttercup in bloom in January would appear almost impossible to those who associate this plant only with the golden splendor of the May meadows; and it is a rare circumstance, but one, nevertheless, which has been noted, and noted, also, of the very buttercup (_Ranunculus repens_), to whose extensively creeping habit we owe so much of the profuse magnificence of the later spring. In the pretty lines familiar to almost every child,—

“While the trees are leafless, While the fields are bare, Golden, glossy buttercups, Spring up here and there,”

we find the early-flowering fact recorded. And, again, the question arises, why is it that “here and there,” before the general leafing time, a buttercup may be found to rear its golden head in one spot, while not far off—and, indeed, within sight it may be—there are tens of thousands of plants of the same species which will not blossom until months later? Sometimes the circumstances of position, in the case of the plant in flower, are so obviously more favorable than those of adjoining flowerless congeners, that the necessary explanation is furnished. But oftentimes the early flowering remains a mystery, in spite of all attempts at elucidation. Does not every one of us remember some occasion when a long walk early in the year has revealed the sight of but one daisy or buttercup in bloom in a locality, which, later on, would have been thronged by countless members of the same species? The mere recollection of the solitary flower which gladdened such a walk is delightful. How much more delightful the event itself!

We need, surely, make no apology for giving something more than mere mention of the dandelion (_Leontodon taraxacum_) in our enumeration of early flowers. It is, doubtless, a very “common” flower: but that we venture to think is the very reason why it should _not_ be contemptuously dismissed as if it were not worthy of description or consideration. Very often it will happen that the familiar yellow blossom of _Leontodon taraxacum_ is the first which we encounter in the early days of the year, and this hardy and persevering plant has this especial claim upon our regard, that it selects ordinarily the most desolate and dismal places as its habitats, covering them oftentimes with a gorgeous sheet of color. Townspeople, and poor townspeople especially, ought to love this plant, for it lights up with its golden glow the surroundings of the most bare and wretched of human habitations.

The dandelion is worthy of attention. The origin of its common name has given rise to some little discussion. That it is a corruption of the French _dents de lion_ is very generally accepted; but in spite of varying opinions as to what part of the plant resembles a lion’s teeth—whether its roots, by their whiteness, or its florets or leaves, by their indentations, we incline to the leaf theory. The circumstance to note in connection with the leaves is that their teeth-like lobes are turned backwards towards the root from which they all directly spring—a habit which is not at all common to plants with indented leaves. If we look, with a glass to assist the eye, at a dandelion leaf against the light, we shall find something to please us, and something to admire in its venation, in the acute points of the serratures, and in its smooth glossiness. Features of interest to note, too, are its brittle, fleshy, tapering, milky root-stock and rootlets; its hollow, brittle, milky and radical flower-stem; and its buds, with the golden tips shining above the conspicuous involucre (a word derived from _involucrum_, a case, or wrapper), the involucre in the case of the dandelion consisting of two sets of green scales, the one set enclosing the yellow florets in the manner of a calyx; the other, and narrower set, consisting of a whorl of bracts, or leaf-like appendages, reflexed or bent down. When the blossom opens the upper bracts remain erect. And by-and-by the yellow florets disappear, and are succeeded, each, by a feathery pappus, connected by a slender stalk with a seed, and serving as a wing to bear the seed away when the ripening time arrives. The convex receptacle, in form so much like a pincushion, is, indeed, covered with seeds, whose feathery appendages are crowded into semi-globular form, ready, however, to take flight on the least breath of wind which may be strong enough to bear away to fresh fields and pastures new the tiny germs of the hardy life which lends the beauty of its presence to brighten forlorn waysides and neglected wastes.

We must include the crocus (_Crocus vernus_) among the possible flowers of January, although the flowering calendar of the gardener will ordinarily be found to assign a later date for its period of blossoming.

The crocus blossom offers the advantage of largeness to those who may wish to carefully study the curious organs of plant flowers. The most conspicuous external feature of the common crocus is the long-tubed purple perianth, divided into six segments, or pieces, constituting the vase-like flower head. Within the floral envelope are contained first the ovary, surmounted by a style which traverses the whole length of the long, narrow tube of the perianth, and is crowned just above the point where the tube expands into its petal-like segments, by a curious three-cleft stigma, each lobe of which is club-shaped or wedge-shaped, and jagged at its extremity. Some little distance below the level of the stigma are reared the anthers of the stamens, three in number. When the pollen grains from these organs have fertilized the ovary, by the agency of the stigma and style, the office of the perianth is fulfilled, and it, with the stamens and stigma, begins to wither and disappear. Then the ovary is enlarged, and rising on a slender stalk from the top of the bulbous root on which it was seated when the floral envelope was present, becomes exposed to the air, and ripens the seeds within its three-celled capsule.

In some of our woods in January may occasionally be found, though it is not widely distributed, the green hellebore (_Helleborus viridis_). The five oval-shaped, green lobes which form the floral envelope are not, as at first might be supposed, petals but sepals, the much smaller petals, eight or ten in number, occupying the inner portion of the blossom, and immediately surrounding the numerous stamens. These petals, or, as they might be called, nectaries, contain a poisonous honey, and the whole plant, indeed—leaves and flowers—is very poisonous.

We may perchance, before the month is out, light upon the pretty blue blossoms of the field speedwell (_Veronica agrestis_), with its hairy, deeply-indented and somewhat heart-shaped leaves, placed in opposite pairs along its branching stems, or, perhaps, upon its relative, _Veronica buxbaumii_.

In wood and copse before the close of January, we may note the sylvan precursor of the green splendor of the later spring—the leafing honeysuckle, the earliest harbinger of sylvan verdure in the days to come. The little leaves have not yet revealed their size and form, and without close examination the light-brown, spiry twigs would appear to wear only their normal wintry aspect. But if we look narrowly at them we shall note the tiny spots of green at the stem knots, where the minute leaves are struggling to emerge from the bud cases. Earliest in leaf among the shrubs and trees of the hedgerow and forest, the woodbine is the latest in flower—spreading, even late in autumn, its sweet fragrance through thicket, copse and dell.

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Childhood is the sleep of reason.—_Rousseau._

BOTANICAL NOTES.

By PROF. J. H. MONTGOMERY.

The numberless uses for india-rubber in this century has made it an indispensable article of commerce and manufacture, consequently its production has become a great industry. Whether the known forests will continue to supply the demand for any considerable time is a practical question. Right here comes the intelligence, that the attention of the government in India has been called to a new source of this useful gum. This new plant which yields large quantities of pure caoutchouc is a native of Cochin China, and is common in Southern India. It belongs to the _dog-bane_ family (the same family that yields strychnine), and is called _Prameria Glandalifera_. In lower China its liquid juice is used for medicine by the Anamites and Cambodians, and it also appears among the drugs of China.

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The Norwegian, Schübeler, mentions some striking peculiarities of plants in high latitudes. He says that seeds produced in these regions are much larger and weigh more than those grown in more temperate climates. The leaves, also, of most plants are larger in the north than those of the same species farther south. Flowers which are white in warmer climates, become colored when they blossom in the north. All these differences he ascribes to the continued light of long days.

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It is noted by naturalists that Arctic plants are destitute of odor as a rule; only a few having a faint scent.

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It appears from an English paper that the secretary of the Royal Society transplanted sea-weed to earth that was kept constantly moist, and that the plants grew and flourished under what would seem to be very unnatural circumstances. This would be an experiment worth trying with our fresh water plants.

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By placing the stems of freshly cut flowers in a liquid dye their petals may often be colored or changed in color. This will not always happen, however, as certain colors are not absorbed by flowers. These dyes do not in any way change or affect the perfume or freshness.

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The time honored method of determining the age of trees by counting their concentric rings has received some very hard blows from recent observations made on the growth of trees. An article in the _Popular Science Monthly_, from the pen of A. L. Childs, M.D., gives some facts which show that these rings do not indicate the age of the tree, and shows what they do indicate. The following passages from the article will give the ground on which his deductions are based: “In June of 1871 I planted a quantity of seed as it ripened and fell from some red maple trees. In 1873 I transplanted some of the trees from these seeds, placing them on my city lots in Plattsmouth, Nebraska. In August, 1882, finding them too much crowded, I cut some out, and, the concentric rings being very distinct, I counted them. From the day of planting the seed to the day of cutting the trees was two months over eleven years. On one, more distinctly marked (although there was but little difference between them), I counted on one side of the heart forty rings. Other sides were not so distinct; but in no part were there fewer than thirty-five. * * * * Hence, from my own record, I _knew_ the tree had but twelve years of growth; and yet, as counted by myself and many others, it had forty clear concentric rings. * * * Hon. R. W. Furness, late Governor of Nebraska, so well known as a practical forester, has kindly furnished me with several sections of trees of known age, from which I select the following: A pig-hickory eleven years old, with sixteen distinct rings; a green ash eight years old, with eleven very plain rings; a Kentucky coffee-tree ten years old, with fourteen very distinct rings, and, in addition to these, twenty-one sub-rings; a burr-oak ten years old, with twenty-four equally distinct rings; a black walnut five years old, with twelve rings. * * * In conclusion, that the more distinct concentric rings of a tree approximate, or in some cases exactly agree, in number with the years of the tree, no one, I presume, will deny; but that in most, and probably nearly all trees, intermediate rings or sub-rings, generally less conspicuous, yet often more distinct than the annual rings, exist is equally certain; and I think the foregoing evidence is sufficient to induce those who prefer truth to error to examine the facts of the case. These sub-rings or additional rings are easily accounted for by sudden and more or less frequent changes of weather, and requisite conditions of growth—each check tending to solidify the newly-deposited cambium, or forming layer; and, as long intervals occur of extreme drought or cold, or other unfavorable causes, the condensation produces a more pronounced and distinct ring than the annual one.”

C. L. S. C. WORK.

By Rev. J. H. VINCENT, D.D., SUPERINTENDENT OF INSTRUCTION.

The readings for January are: “Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation,” fourteen chapters; Chautauqua Text-Book, No. 18, “Christian Evidences;” Chautauqua Text-Book, No. 39, “Sunday-school Normal Work;” Required Readings in THE CHAUTAUQUAN.

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“Memorial Day” for January: “College Day,” Thursday, January 31.

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The map of southern Europe, by Monteith, contains a good map of Greece. Published by A. S. Barnes & Co., of New York. Price, $5.

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Persons who are reading for the additional White Seal for graduates of ’82 and ’83 need not read the Brief History of Greece if they read Timayenis, Vols. 1 and 2.

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By sending forty cents to Miss Edith E. Guinon, Meadville, Pa., members of the classes of ’82 and ’83 may procure badges.

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A student of the C. L. S. C. in Idaho writes: The pupils of the public school will one day be Chautauquans. There is enthusiasm over everything in the course that we enjoy together, and that is a considerable portion of it. We talked over the air when the loveliest blue mist hung for days between us and our most beautiful mountains’ snowy peak. * * * My pupils have treated our very near Chinese neighbors with more consideration since the reading of “China, Corea, and Japan.” * * * This is only the second year of school-life in our place, and we are largely indebted to the C. L. S. C. for help in overcoming some difficulties incident to a first struggle.

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One good English sentence committed every day will greatly enrich one’s vocabulary in the course of a year.

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“Don’t” is a good little manual of manners, but Miss Josephine Pollard’s Chautauqua Text-Book, No. 43, on “Good Manners,” is better. “Don’t” fail to read and practice “Good Manners.”

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Try to pronounce your words accurately and distinctly. Accept with gratitude all hints which drive you to the dictionary. Avoid over-sensitiveness when corrected by fellow-student, friend or foe.

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A telegraph operator writes: “Coming from the beautiful village of ——, Wis., where I was a member of a flourishing circle, and finding myself in this little western town on the Minnesota prairies, how could I pass the long tedious hours of the night if it were not for the studies of the C. L. S. C.? I am a night operator for the railroad company, and while the great majority of the great army of the C. L. S. C. are asleep and dreaming, I am studying. Thank God for the C. L. S. C.! How much broader life seems since I commenced these studies, and it is a pleasant thought to me that in ’86, when I graduate, I shall possibly be able to go to Chautauqua, and to shake hands with you.”

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The Monteagle Assembly (Tennessee) last summer developed an intense C. L. S. C. enthusiasm. The meetings were lively, largely attended, and increased in interest to the very close of the Assembly. A committee was appointed to erect a C. L. S. C. building at Monteagle. I call upon all members of the C. L. S. C. to do what they can in the way of contributions to this Monteagle building. I am anxious not to turn the C. L. S. C. into an advertising channel for local interests, but the Monteagle movement, covering as it does the whole southern field, deserves our hearty sympathies, and I hope that many members will feel free to send contributions of any sum to the secretary, Rev. J. H. Warren, Murfreesboro, Tenn.

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