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,