By FRANCIS GEORGE HEATH.

The fields and woods of January, when not covered by snow, offer much better opportunities for the study of flowers than we ordinarily believe. Mr. Heath has told, in his “Sylvan Spring,” of all the early-comers of the year. If all the flowers which he mentions here are not found this season in a locality, observation extending through several seasons will undoubtedly reveal them. A carefully kept note-book of all the changes in vegetation, the growth, blossoming, etc., will be found most interesting.

January in temperate latitudes is popularly believed to possess no wild flowers in our lanes, fields or hedgebanks; and the reason for the common belief is that no one expects or looks for them, and there is no conspicuous color to attract attention to them at that ordinarily cold and apparently “dead” season of the year. Yet there are not less than twenty-five of our wild flowers that may be found in bloom somewhere in January.

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:

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 foetid hellebore (Helleborus foetidus) 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,—

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.

Childhood is the sleep of reason.—Rousseau.