The Evening Primrose
THE summer which is allowed to pass without a visit to the twilight haunt of the evening primrose, perhaps at your very door, is an opportunity missed. Night after night for weeks it breathes its fragrant invitation as its luminous blooms flash out one by one from the clusters of buds in the gloom, as though in eager response to the touch of some wandering sprite, until the darkness is lit up with their luminous galaxy—that beautiful episode of blossom-consciousness and hope so picturesquely described by Keats:
"A tuft of evening primroses
O'er which the wind may hover till it dozes,
O'er which it well might take a pleasant sleep,
But that 'tis ever startled by the leap
Of buds into ripe flowers."
Nor is it necessary to brave the night air to witness this sudden transformation. A cluster of the flowers placed in a vase beneath an evening lamp will reveal the episode, though robbed of the poetic attribute of their natural sombre environment and the murmuring response of the twilight moth, a companion to which its form, its color, and its breath of perfume and impulsive greeting are but the expression of a beautiful divine affinity.
Then there is that pretty daylight mystery of the faded, drooping bells of last night's impulsive blossoms, each perhaps tenanted by the tiny, faithful moth which first welcomed its open twilight chalice, and which now has crept close within its wilted cup, the yellow tips of its protruding wings simulating the fading petals. And again, a few weeks later, with what surprise do we discover that these long columns of green seed-pods are not always what they seem, but are intermingled with or supplanted by smooth, green caterpillars which exactly resemble them in size and general shape, the progeny of our tiny pink and yellow moth now feeding on the young seed-pods! Verily even a vireo or worm-eating warbler, who is supposed to know a green caterpillar when he sees one, might perch among these without a suspicion, except perhaps at the tickling of its feet by the rudely touched victim.
But these are not all the interesting features of the evening primrose. It has still another curious secret, which has doubtless puzzled many a country stroller, and which is suggested in the following inquiry from a rural correspondent:
"I read in 'Harper's Young People' your piece about the evening primrose, and found the little moth and the catterpilers, what I never seen before; but they is one thing what you never tole us about yit. Why is it that the buds on so meny evening primroses swell up so big and never open? Some of them has holes into them, but I never seen nothing cum out."