Botanizing
THE
ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics.
IN this paper I do not intend to treat of the nomenclature and classification of plants, nor of the laws of vegetable physiology. There is a branch of this science, not involving any deep research, but serving rather to amuse the mind than to store it with knowledge, to which I invite the reader’s attention. I allude to the study of flowers, or that part of botany which belongs to poetry and romance, rather than philosophy, and affords more exercise to the taste and imagination than to the higher mental faculties. This study is generally regarded by the female sex as one of the most interesting branches of natural history ; but the pleasure of the pursuit is derived principally from the cheerful exercise attending the search for plants in field and forest. A ramble in the haunts of birds and flowers on any pleasant day of the year, even when we go out for no particular purpose, is always delightful; and this pleasure is greatly magnified if we have some interesting object in view, like hunting, fishing, or collecting plants and minerals.
But women cannot conveniently become hunters or anglers, nor can they without some eccentricity of conduct follow birds and quadrupeds to the woods, and study their manners and habits in their native haunts. The only part of natural history which they can pursue out of doors is the study of plants. Even in this field they meet with obstacles not encountered by the other sex. A young woman cannot safely roam at will in any place and at any distance. She is exposed to many annoyances and to some dangers not to be overlooked or despised. While a young man may traverse the whole country in his researches, his sister must confine her walks to the vicinity of her own home and to the open fields and waysides, and in these limited excursions she sometimes needs protection.
My own interest in botany was first awakened by collecting flowers for my sisters which they afterwards analyzed and named. Thus I came to know the names of many plants before I had learned the first rudiments of botany, and could designate their respective haunts before I knew anything of botanical classification or science. Even to this day I am more acquainted with the habitats of our native plants and with their forms and beauty than with their botanical characters. While thus employed by my sisters, I felt conscious that I enjoyed the principal pleasure of the pursuit, while they performed all the drudgery ; for half the pleasure of the study is lost, if the students be not the collectors of their own specimens. In this case, however, my sisters shared from sympathy a great part of the interest I felt in my own adventures, and valued a flower which had cost me a great deal of search, and some perilous and perplexing travel through bogs, brambles, and thickets, before I could obtain it, as a great prize. My adventures, when I recounted them, gave them an interest in my acquisitions which they could not have felt, if I had just picked them up from the roadside. If at any time I had got a ducking, or had come home covered with mud, or with bruised limbs, or a scratched face, in my scrambling after a rare plant, my mishaps gave it in their eyes an additional value. There is a philosophy in these matters, which has never yet received the attention it deserves, and is still very imperfectly understood, especially by those who would make the path through every field of learning so smooth and easy as to excite nothing of the spirit of adventure.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by JAMES R. OSGOOD & Co., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
Hence the perfectly uninteresting character of the study of botany when pursued in a garden. We meet with no adventures here, no dangers, no obscurity and uncertainty of course, no perplexity or suspense, no mysterious intricacy of paths to be unravelled, nothing of that gratification which is the reward of patient and diligent search, no excitement, indeed, of any kind. Botanizing in a garden is like gunning in a poultry-yard. It is like sitting at a sumptuous feast and being fed, instead of killing your game and making your repast under the shade of a wood. Every hunter knows that the pleasure of any excursion is increased by the scarcity of his game and by the roughness and intricacy of his hunting-ground, provided the game exists there, and the difficulties of his pursuit are not insurmountable.
Though I was never addicted to perilous adventures, I still remember those with the most pleasure that partook in the highest degree of this character, and were followed by the greatest weariness. One of my most agreeable reminiscences was an occasion of a long day’s journey with a fellow-student, in quest of the three-leaved Solomon’s Seal, — a very rare species, which some years before had been found in a swamp about eight miles from our homes. Our rambles through narrow lanes, and past rustic cottages, with their lilacs and roses, their simple gardens, and their loquacious inhabitants ; then down through woodland paths, and over meadows spangled with violets ; through bogs and over potatopatches ; scaling precipices and wading through ditches, slaking our thirst with the water of musical streams, and appeasing our hunger with a few scattering strawberries, made the whole day one of intense delight. How completely would the pleasure of this excursion have been destroyed, if on our road some florist had exhibited to us a profusion of these flowers in his conservatory ! All the pleasures of expectation, of action and resolution, of alternate hope and uncertainty, and finally of fruition, made a hundred-fold more delightful by the toils and hardships of which it was the reward, would in this case have never been felt.
On the next morning, when we were to commence another similar journey, I found my comrade in a fit condition to be photographed as a lusus natura, his eyes being entirely closed and his face swollen and inflamed with the poison of Sumach. Indeed, his features were not discernible at all ; but in the place of them were certain indentations or dimples in his rotund face, giving it the likeness of an enormous red-skinned potato. Here was a new cause of excitement and philosophic inquiry. It awakened our interest in identifying the poisonous plants and learning their properties. Our journey was postponed, but my comrade, who was both a wag and a philosopher, amused me during his blindness with a lecture on toxicology.
Of the poisonous plants which many persons dread as they would a serpent, there are only two that are known to communicate their effects by being touched or handled. These are two of the Sumachs, one bearing the common name of Poison Ivy, the other that of Poison Dogwood. But, as I am not writing a botanical description of plants, I will only say that neither of these two bears conspicuous or beautiful flowers. Their flowers are of a greenish clay-color, very minute, borne in irregular clusters, and possessing no beauty of any kind. Their fruit also is small, and offers not the least temptation to the sight or to any other sense. The young rambler may therefore put aside all fear of gathering or handling any plant in our woods that bears a beautiful flower or an agreeable fruit. Flowers of great beauty are often the product of plants which, like the Aconite and Stramonium, are deadly poisons, if their juices are taken into the stomach. But any of these may be safely handled. It is remarkable, however, that the flowers of such plants never emit an agreeable odor : they are always fetid and offensive. Nature has so qualified her vegetable productions, that animals shall recognize all those of a poisonous character by their disagreeable odor, and those of a wholesome kind by their agreeable properties of taste and smell.
It will not be denied that the dangers as well as the annoyances to which we are exposed in the wilds of nature are the source of half the pleasure of botanizing as well as of hunting and angling. The interest we feel in a garden is of a different kind. It is generally one of taste, perhaps of ambition ; the love of a quiet and voluptuous employment, enlisting all the senses, and gratifying in the highest degree a passion for beautiful forms and colors and their harmonious arrangements. It is like a love of painting, drawing, music, and reading verses. But the study of wild-flowers is intimately associated with action and adventure, and the rude and sublime as well as the beautiful scenes of nature. Hence we do not find these two habits of mind always united in the same person, and neither of them is like a taste for science, which is quite a different thing. In the garden we generally admire profusion, artful arrangement, and splendor. But, as I have said before, profusion in the fields would destroy all the fascinating interest that attends a botanizing tour. The same flower that would hardly gain from us a look of recognition among the hosts of a garden, awakens the most intense delight when discovered, after several hours of wearisome search, dangling from a high rock or glowing upon us from the opposite bank of a river. In either of these cases our zeal is heightened by our partial disappointment, and by the new difficulties we must encounter, before the flower can be gathered.
I cannot describe the joy I felt, mingled with about equal chagrin, when, after a long and tiresome journey in quest of the yellow Lady’s-slipper, I discovered one on the opposite wooded side of the Shawsheen River, — a beautiful stream that wanders through the classic grounds of Andover and Boxford. I thought at first of swimming for it; but there were so many clumps of Button Bush and Dutch Myrtle scattered about the stream, which in this place was widened into a muddy shallow, that it was not safe to wade or swim across it on account of the soft mud at the bottom, and the tangled roots of these aquatic shrubs. My only alternative was to follow the river about half a mile down to a bridge, then cross it and return on the other side. My pains were doubly rewarded by obtaining the plant and by the rare discovery of an oven-bird’s nest, which I had never before seen. Thus any such disappointment in traversing the woods may lead to new discoveries by changing our course and guiding us into new paths.
Yet while we are aware that certain perils and inconveniences increase the pleasures of botanizing, it is not to be understood that we should neglect to study the art of avoiding and surmounting them. This is an important part of the science of botanizing ; and it should include knowledge of the best hours of the day for rambling, and the means of performing our intricate and often pathless journeys, and finding our way through the woods without guide or compass. It should treat also of the habitats of different plants and how they are to be discovered. The art of preserving flowers is another thing. This is one of the fine arts, and seems more nearly allied to that of painting.
Several hours of the morning must elapse, before the dews will be dried from the grass and shrubbery. These are a source of great discomfort unattended with any satisfaction, especially to the female sex, who cannot with impunity draggle their garments through the wet grass and bushes. For them, if not for all, the best time for botanizing is the afternoon during the three or four hours preceding dewfall. There is a serene delight attending an early morning walk that may be compared only with the bliss of paradise. The earth never seems so much like heaven as on a fine morning in summer, a little while before sunrise. But a walk at this hour is a luxury which only the hardy and robust can safely enjoy, except with great moderation. Some flowers, like the Convolvulus, are bright only in the morning ; some close their petals before noonday. Some, like the white Water-Lily, do not open until they meet the direct rays of the sun ; others, like the Evening Primrose, wait, except in cloudy weather, until the sun begins to redden in the west. But hundreds of species are bright and beautiful nearly the whole day; so that an early morning walk is not necessary, except to obtain sight of certain flowers of peculiar habit.
We may by chance discover a rare and interesting plant in a situation that would be the last to invite our attention. The apparent unfitness of the place for aught but common weeds may have preserved it from observation. I have sometimes encountered by the roadside a species for which I had long vainly traversed the woods. On the borders of some of the less frequented roads in the country, the soil and the plants still remain in their primitive condition. In such grounds we may find materials for study for several weeks, without leaving the waysides. Indeed, all those old roads which are not thoroughfares — byways not travelled enough to destroy the grass between the ruts of wheels and the middle path made by the feet of horses — are very propitious to the growth of wild plants. The shrubbery on these old roadsides, when it has not been disturbed for a number of years, is far more beautiful than the finest imaginable hedgerow. Here are several Viburnums, two or three species of Cornel, the Bayberry, the Sweet Fern, the Azalea, the Rhodora, the small Kalmia, and a crowd of Whortleberry-bushes, besides the Wild Rose and Eglantine. The narrow footpath through this wayside shrubbery has a magic about it that makes it perfect bliss to pass through it. Under the shelter of this shrubbery Nature calls out the Wood Anemone, blue, white, and pedate Violets, and in damp places the Erythronium, the Solomon’s Seal, and the Bellwort, When I see these rustic ornaments destroyed for the improvement of the road, I feel like one who sees his own paternal estate swept of its productions and measured out into auction-lots.
There are indications by which we may always identify the haunts of certain species, if they have not been eradicated. We know that fallow grounds are inhabited by weeds, and that mean soils contain plants that seem by their thrift to require a barren situation ; but they are like poor people, who live in mean huts because the better houses are occupied by their superiors. These plants would grow more luxuriantly in a good soil, if they were not crowded out by those of more vigorous habit. Every one is familiar with a species of Rush (Juncus tenuis) called Wire Grass, which is abundant in footpaths through wet meadows. It is so tough that the feet of men and animals, while they crush and destroy all other plants that come up there, leave this uninjured. This remarkable habit has caused the belief that it thrives better from being trampled under feet. The truth is, it will bear more hard usage than other species, and is made conspicuous by being left alone after all its companions have been trodden to death. The same may be observed of a species of Polygonum, — the common “ knot-grass ” of our back yards. A certain amount of trampling is favorable to its growth by crushing out all its competitors.
Most of our naturalized plants inhabit those places which were once reduced to tillage and afterwards restored to nature. Such are the sites of old gardens and orchards, and the forsaken enclosures of some old dwelling-house. The white Bethlehem Star is a tenant of these deserted grounds, glowing meekly under the protection of some moss-covered stone wall or dilapidated shed, fraternizing with the Celandine, the sweet Chervil, and here and there a solitary Narcissus. The Euphorbia and Houseleek prosper in similar places, growing freshly upon ledges and heaps of stones, which have been carted by the farmer into abrupt hollows, mixed with the soil and weeds of the garden. In shady corners we find the Coltsfoot, the Gill, — a very pretty labiate, — and some of the foreign mints. Spikenard and Tansy delight in more open places, along with certain other medicinal herbs introduced by ancient simplers. These plants are seldom found in woods or primitive pastures.
Wild plants of rare beauty abound in a recent clearing, especially in a tract from which a growth of hard wood has been felled, if afterwards the soil has remained undisturbed. In the deep woods the darkness will not permit any sort of undergrowth except a few plants of peculiar habit and constitution. But after the removal of the wood, all kinds of indigenous plants, whose seeds have been wafted there by the winds or carried there by the birds, will revel in the clearing, until they are choked by a new growth of trees and shrubs. Strawberries and several species of brambles spring up there as if by magic, and cover the stumps of the trees with their vines and their racemes of black and scarlet fruit; and hundreds of beautiful flowering plants astonish us by their presence, as if they were a new creation. We must look to these clearings, and to those tracts in which the trees have been destroyed by fire, more than to any others, for the exact method of nature. Among the very first plants which would appear after the burning, beside the liliaceous plants whose bulbs lie too deep in the soil to be destroyed, are those with downy seeds, which are immediately planted there by the winds. One very conspicuous and beautiful plant, the Spiked Willow Herb, is so abundant in any tract that has been burned, the next year after the conflagration, that in the West and the British Provinces it has gained the name of Fireweed.
But the paradise of the young botanist is a glade, or open space in a wood, usually a level between two rocky eminences, or a little alluvial meadow pervaded by a small stream, open to the sun, and protected at the same time from the winds by surrounding hills and woods. It is surprising how soon the flowery tenants of one of these glades will vanish after the removal of this bulwark of trees. But with this protection, the loveliest flowers will cluster there, like the singing birds around a cottage and its enclosures in the wilderness. Here they find a genial soil and a natural conservatory, and abide there until some accident destroys them. Nature selects these places for her favorite gardenplots. In the centre she rears her tender herbs and flowers, and her shrubbery in the borders, while the trees form a screen around the whole. I have often seen one of these glades crimsoned all over with flowers of the Cymbidium and Arethusa, with wild Roses in their borders, vying in splendor with a sumptuous parterre.
While strolling through a wood in one of those rustic avenues which have been made by the farmer or the woodman, we shall soon discover that this path is likewise a favorite resort for many species of wild-flowers. Except the glade, there are but few places so bountifully stored by nature with a starry profusion of bloom. The Cranesbill, the Wood Anemone, the Cinquefoil, the yellow Bethlehem Star, the Houstonia, to say nothing of crowds of Violets, adorn the verdant sward of these woodpaths; and still beyond them, cherished by the sunshine that is admitted into this opening, Ginsengs, Bellworts, the white starlike Trientalis, the Trillium, and Medeola thrive more prosperously than in situations entirely wild and primitive. It is pleasant to note how kindly nature receives these little disturbances which are made by the woodman, and how many beautiful things will assemble there, to be fostered by those conditions which accident, combined with the rude operations of agriculture, alone can produce.
Leaving this avenue, we ascend the sloping ground, and passing through a tangled bed of Lycopodiums, often meeting with the remnants of a footpath that is soon obliterated in a mass of vegetation ; then wandering pathless over ground made smooth by a brown matting of pine leaves, beautifully pencilled over with the small creeping vines and checkered foliage of the Mitchella and its scarlet berries, we come at last to a little rocky dell full of the greenery of mosses and ferns, and find ourselves in the home of the Columbines. Such a brilliant assemblage reminds you of an aviary full of linnets and goldfinches. The botanist does not consider the Columbine a rare prize. It is a well-known plant, thriving both in the wood and outside of it; but it is gregarious, and selects for its habitation a sunny place in the woods, upon a bed of rock covered with a thin crust of soil. The plants take root on every rocky projection and in every crevice, hanging like jewels from a green tapestry of velvet moss.
As we leave this magic recess of flowers and pursue our course under the pines, trampling noiselessly over the brown, elastic sward, we soon discover the purple, inflated blossoms of the pink Lady’s-slipper. These flowers are always considerably scattered, and never grace the open field. Often in their company we observe the sweet Pyrola, bearing a long spike of white flowers that have the odor of cinnamon. Less frequently we find in this scattered assemblage some rare species of Wood Orchis and the singular Coral Plant. If we now trace the course of any little streamlet to a glen full of pale green bog-moss, covering the ground with a deep mass of spongy vegetation, there we may be lucky enough to discover the rare and beautiful White Orchis, the Nun of the Woods, with flowers resembling the pale face of a lady wearing a white cap. This plant is found only in certain cloistered retreats, under the shade of woods. It is a true vestal, and will not tarnish its purity by any connection with the soil. It is cradled like an infant in the soft, green bog-moss, and derives its sustenance from the pure air and dews of heaven. Like the Orchids of warm climates, it is half parasitic, and requires certain conditions for its growth which are rarely combined.
Flowers are usually abundant in pleasant situations. They avoid cold and bleak exposures, the dark shade of very dense woods, and wet places seldom visited by sunshine. Like birds, they love protection, and we are sure to meet with many species wherever the singing birds of the forest are numerous. Birds and flowers require the same fostering warmth, the same sunshine, and the same fertility of soil to supply them with their food. When we are traversing a deep forest, the silence of the situation is one of the most notable circumstances of our journey ; but if we suddenly encounter a great variety of flowers, our ears will at the same time be greeted by the notes of some little thrush or sylvia. If I hear the veery, a bird that loves to mingle his liquid notes with the sound of some tuneful runlet, I know that I am approaching the shady haunts of the Trillium and the Wood Thalictrum. If I hear the snipe feebly imitating the lark, as he soars at twilight, and warbles his chirruping song far above my head, I know that when he descends in his spiral course he will alight upon grounds occupied by the Canadian Rhodora, the Andromeda, and the wild Strawberry plant. But if the song of the robin is heard in the forest, I feel sure that a cottage is near, with its orchard and cornfields, or else that I am close to the end of the wood and am about to emerge into the open plain.
A moor is seldom adorned with plants that would prosper in the uplands ; but if it be encompassed by a circle of wooded hills, a gay assemblage of flowers will congregate in its borders, where hill and moor are imperceptibly blended. We may always find a path made by cattle all along the border. If we thread the course of this path, we pass through bushes of moderate height, consisting of Whortleberries, Clethra, and Swamp Honeysuckles, and now and then enter a drier path, through ' eds of Sweet Fern, and occasional open spaces full of pedate Violets. The docile animals,— the picturesque artists who constructed this path, — while grazing upon the clover-patches will turn their large eyes placidly upon us, still heeding their diligent occupation. We keep close to the edge of the moor, not disregarding many common and homely plants that lie in our way, till we discover the object of our search, the Sarracenia, or Sidesaddle plant, with its dark purple flowers, nodding like Epicureans over their circle of leafy cups half filled with dew. This is a genuine “pitcher plant,”and is the only one of the family that is not tropical. The Geum rivale, — Water Avens, — conspicuous for its drooping chocolate-colored flowers, — and the Golden Senecio, congregate in the same meadow, bending their plumes above the tall Rushes and autumnal Asters not yet in flower.
Very early in the season, if you are near an oak wood, standing on a slope with a southern exposure, enter it, and if fortune favors you, the Anemone hepatica, or Liverwort, will meet your sight, pushing up the dry oak leaves that formed its winter covering, and displaying its pale bluish and purple flowers, deepening their hues as they expand. When they are fully opened, there are but few sights so pleasant as these circular clusters of flowers, on a ground of dry brown foliage, enlivened with hardly a tuft of verdure, except the trilobate leaves of this interesting plant. As oaks usually stand on a fertile soil, there is a greater variety of species among their undergrowth than in almost any other wood. A grove of oaks, after it has been thinned by the woodman so as to open the grounds to the sun, becomes when left to nature a rare repository of herbaceous plants. Yet there are certain curious species which are found almost exclusively in pine woods. Such is the genus Monotropa, including two species, the Pine Sap and the Bird’s Nest, plants without leaves or hues, with stems resembling potato-sprouts grown in a dark cellar ; outside of pine woods, however, on their southern boundary, we may always look for the earliest spring flowers, because no other wood affords them so warm a protection.
In our imaginary tour we have visited only the most common scenes of nature ; we have traced to their habitats very few rare plants, and have yet hardly noticed the flowers of autumn, — those luxuriant growers, many of them half shrubby and branching like trees. Some of them have no select haunts. The Asters and Goldenrods, the most conspicuous of the hosts of autumn, are found in almost every soil and situation ; though they congregate chiefly on the borders of woods and fields, and seem to take special delight in arraying themselves by the sides of new roads, recently laid out through a wet meadow. The autumnal plants generally prosper only in the lowlands, which have not suffered from the summer droughts. Hence when botanizing in the close of the season, we must avoid dry sandy places, and follow the windings of narrow streams, that glide through peat-meadows, and traverse the sides of ditches, examining the convex embankment of soil which has been thrown up by the spade of the ditcher. On these level moors we meet with occasional rows of Willows affectionately guarding the waters of these artificial pools where they were planted as sentinels by the rustic laborer. The Gentians, which have always been admired, as much for the delicacy and beauty of their flowers as for their hardy endurance of autumnal frost, are often strown in these places, glowing like sapphires on the faded greensward of the closing season of vegetation.
The great numbers of wild plants which are often assembled in a single meadow seem to a poetical mind as something more than a result of the mere accidents of nature. There is not a greater variety or diversity in the thoughts that enter and pass through the mind than of species among these herbs. Each of them has distinct features, and some attractive form or color, or some other remarkable property peculiar to itself. How many different species bend under our footsteps while we are crossing an ordinary field ! How many thousands are constantly distilling odors into the atmosphere, which is oxygenated by their foliage and purified and renovated by their vital and chemical action ! There is not a single plant, however obscure, minute, or unattractive, that is not an important agent of Nature in her vast and mysterious economy.
There would be no end to our adventures, if we were resolved to continue them until our observations were exhausted. Hence the never-failing resources of the botanist for rational amusement and pleasure, who is within an hour’s walk of the forest. The sports of hunting and fishing offer their temptations to a greater number of young persons ; but they do not afford continued pleasure to their votaries, like botanizing. The hunter watches his dog and the angler his line ; but the plant-hunter examines everything that bears a leaf or a flower. His pursuit leads him into all the green recesses of nature, — into sunny dells and shady arbors, over pebbly hills and plashy hollows, through mossy dingles and wandering footpaths, into secret alcoves where the Hamadryads drape the rocks with ferns, and Naiads collect the dews of morning and pour them into their oozy fountains for the perfection of their verdure.
A ride over the roads of the same region is nothing like these intricate journeys of the botanist. He fraternizes with all the inhabitants of the wood, and with the laborers of the farms which he crosses, not heeding the cautions to trespassers. He meets the rustic swain at his plough, and listens to his quaint discourse and his platitudes about nature and mankind, He follows the devious paths of the ruffled grouse, and destroys the snares which are set for his destruction. He listens to his muffled drum while he cools his heated brow under a canopy of birches overarched with woodbine, and picks the scarlet berries that cluster on the green knolls at his feet. He lives in harmony with created things, and hears all the voices of the woods and music of the streams. The trees spread their shade over him, every element loads him with its favors. Morning hails him with her earliest salutation and introduces him to her fairest hours and sweetest gales. Noon tempts him into her silent woodland sanctuaries, and makes the. hermit thrush his solitary minstrel. Evening calls him out from his retreat, to pursue another varied journey among the fairy realms of vegetation, and ere she parts with him curtains the heavens with splendor and prompts her choir of sylvan warblers to salute him with their vespers.
Wilson Flagg.