Everlasting Flowers.
"Bring flowers for the brow of the early dead."
It is on the open prairie-like tracts of rolling land known in Ontario by the names of oak-openings and plains, where the soil is sandy or light loam, that flowers of the Composite Order abound. All through the hot months of July and August, and late into September, the starry-rayed blossoms of the sun-loving Sunflowers, Rudbeckias, Asters and Goldenrods enliven the open wastes and grassy thickets with their gay colors-the more welcome because that the more delicate of the early spring and summer flowers have long since faded and gone, and we know that we shall see them no more.
Our floral calendar might be likened to four stages of life: the tender early flowers of Spring to innocent child-life: the gay blossoms of May and June, with all their fruitful promises, to advancing youth; the ripening fruit of summer's prime, to mature manhood in its strength and perfection; while the white flowers and hoary leaves of our Pearly Everlastings and drooping Grasses are not inapt emblems of old age, bending earthward yet not destroyed, for they have winged seeds that rise and float upwards and heavenwards, and we shall again behold them in renewed youth and beauty.
Early-flowering Everlasting-Antennaria dioica (Gaertn.).
Our earliest Everlasting is a pretty low creeping plant, not exceeding six inches in height, with small round clustered heads of downy whiteness, with dark brown anthers, which resemble the antennæ of some small insect, whence the generic name Antennaria is taken. The leaves of the plant are white beneath and slightly cottony on the outer surface, becoming darker green during the summer. The rootstock is spreading, the leaves numerous, roundish-spatulate. The whole plant has a hoary appearance when it first springs up.
This modest, innocent-looking little flower peeps forth in April and carpets the dry gravelly hills with its downy blossoms and soft silken leaves, sharing the newly uncovered earth with the Blue Violet (Viola cucullata), and early pale yellow Crowfoot, Rock Saxifrage and Barren Wild Strawberry (Waldsteinia fragarioides-Tratt), which is then beginning to put forth its new foliage and yellow flowers, that have been kindly sheltered by the persistent leaves of the former year, now red and bronzed by the frosts of early spring. Our pretty Canadian Everlasting bears some family resemblance to the far-famed "Edelweiss" of the High Alps (Leontopodium alpinum). As in that flower, the clustered heads are set round the centre of the disc, like a little infant family surrounding the careful mother.
In the singular Alpine species the whole plant, from root-leaves to stem and involucre, is thickly clothed with snow-white down, as if to keep it warmly defended from the bitter mountain blasts and whirling showers of snow and hail. Thus does Creative Love shield and clothe the flowers of the field; His tender care is over all His works.
Scarcely has our little Everlasting raised its soft cottony head above the short turf when another species appears, as if to rival its tiny brother, and known as the
Plantain-leaved Everlasting-Antennaria plantaginifolia (Hook.).
This plant varies in height from six inches to eight or nine. The woolly stem is clothed with narrow leafy bracts; the root-leaves are large and broadly ovate, several-nerved, very white underneath, and less downy on the outer surface; the corymbed head of flowers shines with bright scales and silky pappus-the scales are not pure white, but with a slight tinge of brown. Later on in the month of July a tall slender form of this Everlasting may be seen, with larger root-leaves and loose heads of flowers on long footstalks; the flowers are slightly tinged with reddish-purple and silvery-gray, which gives a pearly or prismatic effect as the eye glances over a number of the plants moved by the summer wind. The flowery heads are conical, the unopened blossoms sharply pointed-the whole plant tall, slender and simple, and very downy.[29]
The later plants of the Everlasting family differ from the above species. One commonly called
Neglected Everlasting-Gnaphalium polycephalum (Mx.),
deserves our especial notice on account of the pleasant fragrance which pervades the gummy leaves as well as the shining straw-colored flowers; the scent is aromatic and slightly resinous. This plant is found in old pastures and by wayside waste lands, often mingled with the Pearly Everlasting (Antennaria margaritacea) and other common species of the order.
It is so commonly seen and so little cared for as to have obtained the name of Neglected Everlasting. Truly even a flower may be without honor in its own country!
There is another plant of this family, found in old dry pastures, with straw-colored shining flowers; but it lacks the aromatic fragrance and dark-green narrow revolute gummy leaves of the preceding; it is branching with a wide-spread corymbed head and has the leaves decurrent on the stem, whence its name G. decurrens. This is an earlier species than the Neglected Everlasting.
Pearly Everlasting-Antennaria margaritacea (Hook.).
The abundance of the common Pearly Everlasting induced many of the backwoods settlers' wives to employ the light dry flowers as a substitute for feathers in stuffing beds and cushions; and very sweet and comfortable these primitive pillows and cushions are, as well as pleasantly fragrant, for the Pearly Everlasting is also sweet-scented, though not so much so as G. polycephalum; the heads are soft, elastic, and easily obtained. The French peasants still hang up wreaths or crosses of the white-flowered Everlastings in churches and upon the graves of the dead, to mark where one fair bud or blossom has dropped from the parent tree to mingle with its kindred dust. It is a fond old custom which time and the world's later fashions have not yet changed among the simple habitants.
Surely we may say with the sweet poet:
"They are love's last gift,
Bring flowers-pale flowers."
Yellow Coltsfoot-Tussilago Farfara (L.).
A large proportion of our flowers of midsummer and Autumn are of the Composite Order, but in the spring they are rare, with a few exceptions such as the Early-flowering Everlasting, the Fleabanes and the Coltsfoot.
The first flower that blossoms is the Coltsfoot (Tussilago Farfara-L.), which breaks the ground in April with its scaly leafless stem and single-headed orange-yellow rayed flower. It is a coarse, uninteresting plant, not common excepting in wet clayey soil; seldom found in the forest. It is the earliest plant of the Canadian spring and prized on that account and for its medicinal virtue, real or imaginary. Both flower and leaf are larger than the British species, but its habits are similar.
In July, August and September our rayed flowers predominate, especially in the two latter months; it is then, when the more delicate herbaceous flowers are perfecting their seeds, that our hardy Sunflowers lift up their showy heads and seem to court the glare of the summer sunshine; it is then that we see our open fields gay with Rudbeckias, Chrysanthemums, Ragworts, Goldenrods, Thistles and Hawkweeds. In the forest we find our White Eupatoriums, Prenanthes and Fireweeds. On all waste and neglected spots the wild Chamomile abounds, as if to supply a tonic for agues and intermittents. The beautiful Aster family may now be seen in fields, by waysides, on lonely lake-shores, in thickets, on the margins of pools and mill-dams, or waving its graceful flowery branches on the grassy plains and within the precincts of the forest. There are species for each locality-white, blue, purple, lilac, pearly-blue-with many varieties of shade, height and foliage; some species graceful, bending, and spreading, others stiff, upright and coarse; but the species are numberless and their habits as various. The most elegant are the Aster cordifolius (L.), and A. puniceus (Ait.); the most delicate the little white shrubby Aster (A. multiflorus-L.), with reddish disc and golden-tipped anthers, which give a lovely look to the crowded small white-rayed flowers, as if they were spangled with gold-dust. On dry gravelly banks near lakes and streams is the favorite haunt of this pretty Aster. The plant is much branched, the branches growing at right-angles to the stem, crossed with narrow leaves, and bearing an abundance of small daisy-like blossoms. On the springy shores of ponds and the banks of low creeks an upright single-headed Aster (A. æstivus) may be seen, with bright azure rays and yellow disc, together with a tall woody-stemmed, flat-topped, coarsely-rayed white species, Diplopappus umbellatus (T. & G.). The large-flowered, branching, many-blossomed, purple-rayed Asters are chiefly found in dry fields, by wayside fences, and among loose rocks and stones, giving beauty where all else is rough and unsightly, making the desert to blossom as a garden.
Coneflower-Rudbeckia hirta (L.).
(PLATE VII.)
The Coneflower is one of the handsomest of our rayed flowers. The gorgeous flaming orange dress, with the deep purple disc of almost metallic lustre, is one of the ornaments of all our wild open prairie-like plains during the hot months of July, August and September. We find the...
