The present collection of flowers common to the North-eastern United States, which was started as a personal pastime, has taken its present shape under the belief that it were well to make a beginning towards a floral portrait-gallery; it is from this point of view, rather than from the purely botanical, that the drawings have been made and the descriptions written. Days have been pleasantly spent in searching for a specimen which would show most typically the particular trick of growth, the characteristic gesture which individualized it from all other plants; often a flower has been drawn and described as it grew, surprised in its familiar haunt. Effort has been made to gather within the prescribed limits as great a diversity of growths, and as many variations of types in each family, as was feasible. Because of the desire to localize the collection, somewhat, the flowers of the seaboard have been excluded. A few shrubs, and even one small tree, the Witch Hazel, have been included, because their flowers or fruit form such essential features in the floral calendar, or possess so strong a hold upon the wayfarers’ affections, that their presence has seemed inevitable. In the case of two vines, the Carrion Flower and the Virginia Creeper, the drawings were made from the fruit (companioned by the figure of the single flower) for the obvious reason that the blossoms of the one are inconspicuous, and of the other so malodorous, they offer small temptations to a near acquaintance, while both are recompensed with highly decorative berry-clusters. The drawings of the flowers are the size of life; in every possible instance the growth also is given without reduction.
That every flower-lover will find some favorites omitted, is altogether probable, in a selection of three hundred individuals from among the hosts which invite representation. The extreme dry weather of the previous season must be held accountable for several noteworthy, and much regretted, blanks in the list.
The choice of botanical terms has been intentionally confined to those which long usage has so wrought into the common speech that they have practically ceased to belong to strictly scientific nomenclature. The floral families have been arranged in the order employed in Gray’s Manual; the individual members of a genus, and of a family, have been placed in their usual sequence of bloom, that the flower-gatherer may know when to reasonably expect the successive blossoming of any special set of plants. It is impossible however to be arbitrarily definite in any such classification of Nature’s methods. Nor are we able to do more than to approximate accuracy in describing color; modifications, even direct contradictions, of the normal or usual type are constantly discovered, which we may impute to variations in soil or temperature, but whose appearance follows laws we dimly apprehend. Of one thing only may we be sure: Nature tunes her seemingly fickle choice to harmony, whatever the key; always there remains a perfect adjustment of color between stalk and stem and leaf and blossom.
By the generosity of Mrs. Fanny D. Bergen, of Cambridge, Mass., the lists of folk-names for many flowers have been greatly enriched. Recognition is due also to Dr. B. F. Robinson, and to his assistants of the Harvard Herbarium, for very kind aid in the botanical classification of specimens.
Deerfield, Mass.,
April 3d, 1895.
CONTENTS.
The Cover-Design by E. M.: Derived from the Green Dragon (Arisæma Dracontium) Plant.