LEAFLET XL.
THE HEPATICA.[54]
By ANNA BOTSFORD COMSTOCK.

As children are always especially interested in the wild flowers in spring, I have thought best to study a few of the woodland blossoms. The wonderful processes of plant life are as well shown in these as in any. The hepatica is among the first which greets us in the spring, and we will study this first.

There are several ways of getting acquainted with a plant: one is to go-a-visiting, and another is to invite the plant to our own home, either as guest on the window-sill, or as a tenant of the garden. When we visit the hepatica in its own haunts it is usually with the longing for spring in our hearts that awakens with the first warm sunshine and which is really one of the subtlest as well as greatest charms of living in a climate that has a snowy winter. As we thread our way into the sodden woods, avoiding the streams and puddles that are little glacial rivers and lakes from fast disappearing snow-drifts still heaped on the north sides of things, we look eagerly for signs of returning life. The eye slowly differentiates from the various shades of brown in the floor of the forest a bit of pale blue or pink purple that at first seems as if it were an optical delusion; but as we look again to make sure, lo! it is the hepatica. There it is, rising from its mass of purple brown leaves, leaves that are always beautiful in shape and color and suggest patterns for sculpture like the acanthus or for rich tapestries like the palm-leaf in the Orient. There the brave little flower stands with its face to the sun and its back to the snow-drift and looks out on a gray brown world and nods at it and calls it "good."

It is when the hepatica is our guest that we have a better opportunity for studying its form and features. Take up a hepatica root in the fall and pot it and place it in a cool cellar until March 1. Then give it light, warmth, and moisture on your table and see how gladly it will blossom and tell its secrets. Or perhaps if we are not sufficiently forehanded to get the root in the fall we can get it during a thaw in March when we go foraging for spring feelings in winter woods.

Fig. 275. Hepatica, harbinger of spring.

When finally a bud has uncuddled and lifted itself into a flower, it will tell us the story of leaves in different disguises, and we may be able to notice whether the pollen ripens and is all distributed when the flower begins to fade and fall. We may note also the number of seeds and examine one of them with a lens. It is what the botanists call an akene, which simply means just one seed with a tight envelope about it. We have a careless habit of forgetting all about plants after their blossoms fade unless their fruits or seed are good to eat or good to look at. This is as inconsistent as it would be to lose all interest in the farm before the fields were planted. After the flower is gone the plant must mature its seeds and somehow must sow them. We will study the hepatica through the summer and autumn, for we must know what is happening to it every month.

Questions Concerning the Hepatica to be Answered During March and April.

1. In what situations are the hepaticas found?