JUNE.
June has many beautiful flowering trees, and many rare and remarkable plants. Some of the anemones bloom in April and May, but several wait for June. Among these the rare red anemone is found on rocky banks in Western Vermont, in Northern New York, and Pennsylvania.
Among the pines and maples of Cape Ann, at Manchester, Massachusetts, we find the laurel-magnolia, or sweet-bay, with silky leaves and buds, and deliciously fragrant cream-white flowers. This charming shrub seems to belong to the South, but has strangely strayed away, and made for itself a cozy home on the "stern and rock-bound coast" of New England. This magnolia also grows in Pennsylvania and Southern New York.
Belonging to the same fair family is the tulip-tree, with large tulip-shaped flowers tinged with yellow, orange, and green. These trees are found in rich soil in the Middle, Southern, and Western States.
Another wonderful plant of June is the large water-lily the Nelumbo luteum, or water-chinquepin. This plant apparently belongs to the East Indies, and seems to be nearly related to the pink lotus, or sacred bean of India. The American species is rare, being found at but few places; but Connecticut professes to possess it in the Connecticut River, near Lyme; and it is found in the Delaware River, near Philadelphia, at Woodstown and Swedesborough, New Jersey, and in several Western lakes. The leaves are circular, from one to two feet in diameter, and raised high above the water; the fragrant flowers are pale yellow; the seeds, sunk deeply in a receptacle, are as large as acorns.
Our own beautiful white pond-lily is well known and well beloved; and few New-Englanders are unfamiliar with the serene ponds and still waters where the lily pods make a carpet on which rest the lovely heads of these delicious favorites.
At Sandwich and Barnstable, Massachusetts, and Kennebunk, Maine, are found lilies of a fine rose-color. The common cow-lily, as it is called, though not a beauty like its relatives, is a pleasing variety, being of a rich yellow color.
Next we come to the wonderful pitcher-plants, whose chosen homes are in the black mud of peat-bogs and swamps.
The one with which we are most familiar is favored not only with a botanical name of seven syllables, but has the common names of side-saddle-flower, pitcher-plant, and hunter's-cup—all referring more or less to the curious leaves, which are hollow, and shaped like little pitchers, and are always found partly filled with water. The flower, nodding on a tall stalk, is as singular as the leaves; it is of a deep reddish-purple color, the petals arching over a little green umbrella in the centre, which covers the stamens. This striking and interesting plant may be easily found by any enterprising young botanist who is not afraid of mud and water, as it grows from Maine to Illinois and southward.
Another queer little dweller in bogs and swamps and wet meadows is the sundew, one species of which may be found in June, and others later. The leaves of this peculiar plant are covered with fine reddish-brown hairs, or glands, which furnish small drops of fluid, glittering like dew-drops.
Three species of wild oxalis, or wood-sorrel, should not be overlooked. The yellow, which is found everywhere, is so common as to be unappreciated; but the white, with petals streaked with red lines, is very pretty: it is found in deep, cold woods in Massachusetts and the Middle States. The violet wood-sorrel is, however, the beauty of the family, and rare enough to require being searched for. It springs from a bulb in shady, rocky woods in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York; three or four soft purple blossoms nod on a slender stalk, and it is a lovely little plant. All the wood-sorrels are attractive and interesting from the graceful and pathetic habit which they have of folding up and drooping their delicate leaves at night-fall, opening them at the early light of morning.
The showy wild lupine comes out with long racemes of purple, pink, blue, and white blossoms, covering sandy fields with a flush of color.
The dear wild roses make the wood paths beautiful, and the indescribably delicious fragrance of the sweet-brier betrays its location on the dry banks and rocky road-sides.
The flowering raspberry, found in moist woods and shady dells, is as beautiful as the rose, and the buds, if possible, more beautiful than rose-buds. The flowers are large, of a vivid deep rose-red, and the leaves maple-shaped, and very graceful.
In June, also, come six or eight species of Cornus, or dogwood, each beautiful in its way. These shrubs, which are generally found in rich soil in rocky, open woods, are rare in New England, but abundant in the Middle States. The brilliant little bunchberry, however, which belongs to the Cornus family, delights in the deep cold woods of Maine, where it grows luxuriantly, its rich red berries charming the eye in the depths of the forest.
In the gloom of shady woods, at the roots of pine and oak trees, the young botanist may perhaps be startled to see an array of little ghosts, as it were, springing from dead leaves, and without one touch of the green of summer, but waxen-white in every part, leaves, stems, and all, sometimes having a faint shade of pink or tawny yellow. This is the Indian-pipe, with none of the healthful honesty of other plants, but stealing its existence from surrounding neighbors; and with this ghostly parasite we will close the list for June, not that it is exhausted, for hundreds stand waiting, but it would take a book to tell of them all.