"I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
"Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay.
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance."
No such sight could greet the poet's eye here. He might see ten thousand marsh marigolds, or ten times ten thousand houstonias, but they would not toss in the breeze, and they would not be sweet-scented like the daffodils.
It is to be remembered, too, that in the moister atmosphere of England the same amount of fragrance would be much more noticeable than with us. Think how our sweet bay, or our pink azalea, or our white alder, to which they have nothing that corresponds, would perfume that heavy, vapor-laden air!
In the woods and groves in England, the wild hyacinth grows very abundantly in spring, and in places the air is loaded with its fragrance. In our woods a species of dicentra, commonly called squirrel corn, has nearly the same perfume, and its racemes of nodding whitish flowers, tinged with red, are quite as pleasing to the eye, but it is a shyer, less abundant plant. When our children go to the fields in April and May, they can bring home no wild flowers as pleasing as the sweet English violet, and cowslip, and yellow daffodil, and wallflower; and when British children go to the woods at the same season, they can load their hands and baskets with nothing that compares with our trailing arbutus, or, later in the season, with our azaleas; and when their boys go fishing or boating in summer, they can wreathe themselves with nothing that approaches our pond-lily.
There are upward of forty species of fragrant native wild flowers and flowering shrubs and trees in New England and New York, and, no doubt, many more in the South and West. My list is as follows:—
White violet (Viola blanda).
Canada violet (Viola Canadensis).
Hepatica (occasionally fragrant).
Trailing arbutus (Epigæa repens).
Mandrake (Podophyllum peltatum).
Yellow lady's-slipper (Cypripedium parviflorum).
Purple lady's-slipper (Cypripedium acaule).
Squirrel corn (Dicentra Canadensis).
Showy orchis (Orchis spectabilis).
Purple fringed-orchis (Habenaria psycodes).
Arethusa (Arethusa bulbosa).
Calopogon (Calopogon pulchellus).
Lady's-tresses (Spiranthes cernua).
Pond-lily (Nymphæa odorata).
Wild Rose (Rosa nitida).
Twin-flower (Linnæa borealis).
Sugar maple (Acer saccharinum).
Linden (Tilia Americana).
Locust-tree (Robinia pseudacacia).
White-alder (Clethra alnifolia).
Smooth azalea (Rhododendron arborescens).
White azalea (Rhododendron viscosum).
Pinxter-flower (Rhododendron nudiflorum).
Yellow azalea (Rhododendron calendulaceum).
Sweet bay (Magnolia glauca).
Mitchella vine (Mitchella repens).
Sweet coltsfoot (Petasites palmata).
Pasture thistle (Cnicus pumilus).
False wintergreen (Pyrola rotundifolia).
Spotted wintergreen (Chimaphila maculata).
Prince's pine (Chimaphila umbellata).
Evening primrose (Œnothera biennis).
Hairy loosestrife (Steironema ciliatum).
Dogbane (Apocynum).
Ground-nut (Apios tuberosa).
Adder's-tongue pogonia (Pogonia ophioglossoides).
Wild grape (Vitis cordifolia).
Horned bladderwort (Utricularia cornuta).
The last-named, horned bladderwort, is perhaps the most fragrant flower we have. In a warm, moist atmosphere, its odor is almost too strong. It is a plant with a slender, leafless stalk or scape less than a foot high, with two or more large yellow hood or helmet shaped flowers. It is not common, and belongs pretty well north, growing in sandy swamps and along the marshy margins of lakes and ponds. Its perfume is sweet and spicy in an eminent degree. I have placed in the above list several flowers that are intermittently fragrant, like the hepatica, or liver-leaf. This flower is the earliest, as it is certainly one of the most beautiful, to be found in our woods, and occasionally it is fragrant. Group after group may be inspected—ranging through all shades of purple and blue, with some perfectly white—and no odor be detected, when presently you will happen upon a little brood of them that have a most delicate and delicious fragrance. The same is true of a species of loosestrife growing along streams and on other wet places, with tall bushy stalks, dark green leaves, and pale axillary yellow flowers (probably European). A handful of these flowers will sometimes exhale a sweet fragrance; at other times, or from another locality, they are scentless. Our evening primrose is thought to be uniformly sweet-scented, but the past season I examined many specimens, and failed to find one that was so. Some seasons the sugar maple yields much sweeter sap than in others; and even individual trees, owing to the soil, moisture, etc., where they stand, show a great difference in this respect. The same is doubtless true of the sweet-scented flowers. I had always supposed that our Canada violet—the tall, leafy-stemmed white violet of our Northern woods—was odorless, till a correspondent called my attention to the contrary fact. On examination I found that, while the first ones that bloomed about May 25 had very sweet-scented foliage, especially when crushed in the hand, the flowers were practically without fragrance. But as the season advanced the fragrance developed, till a single flower had a well-marked perfume, and a handful of them was sweet indeed. A single specimen, plucked about August 1, was quite as fragrant as the English violet, though the perfume is not what is known as violet, but, like that of the hepatica, comes nearer to the odor of certain fruit-trees.
It is only for a brief period that the blossoms of our sugar maple are sweet-scented; the perfume seems to become stale after a few days: but pass under this tree just at the right moment, say at nightfall on the first or second day of its perfect inflorescence, and the air is loaded with its sweetness; its perfumed breath falls upon you as its cool shadow does a few weeks later.
After the linnæa and the arbutus, the prettiest sweet-scented flowering vine our woods hold is the common mitchella vine, called squaw-berry and partridge-berry. It blooms in June, and its twin flowers, light cream-color, velvety, tubular, exhale a most agreeable fragrance.