To find this flower, your eyes must be brighter than usual. It grows close to the ground, and is usually hidden from sight by the pair of round, woolly leaves shooting up from the underground stem, which tastes like ginger. This thick underground stem is the storehouse whose stock of food makes it possible for the plant to flower and leaf so early in the year.
Fig. [215] shows you the pretty wake-robin. This is a lily. But it is unlike the lilies we already know, in that its calyx and corolla are quite distinct, each having three separate leaves. It has six stamens, and one pistil with three branches.
Fig. 215
Fig. 216
The general building plan of the violet (Fig. [216]) is the old one of calyx, corolla, stamens, pistil. But the leaves of this calyx (Fig. [217]) are put together in a curious, irregular fashion; and the different leaves of the corolla are not of the same shape and size as in the cherry blossom. Then the five stamens of the violet are usually joined about the stalk of the pistil in a way that is quite confusing, unless you know enough to pick them apart with a pin, when they look like this picture you see above, to the right (Fig. [218]).
| Fig. 217 | Fig. 219 | Fig. 220 | Fig. 218 |
Fig. 221