Woodland Paths

by Winthrop Packard

Last of all was a little red chap that shot through the rich gold of the sunlight quite like an agitated bullet, his motor doing its very prettiest with the muffler off and both propellers roaring. Orville Wright could not have caught him. It was but a brief glimpse that I got, but I took him for one of the skippers, perhaps the silver-spotted, which is common here, though I have never seen one so early before. He was burly, thick-necked, short-winged, which is characteristic of the hesperids.

I would be glad to know what these early butterflies find to eat. Certain flowers are now in bloom, but you never find a mourning cloak or a hunter, a question mark or a painted lady fluttering about them. The bees are in the willow blooms and the alder catkins after pollen. The maples are in bloom. You can find hepaticas and violets, chickweed, crocus, snowdrop, and, I dare say, dandelions in blossom, and almost every day some new shrub or shy herb sends perfumed invitation out on the messenger winds.

Yet I find April butterflies most partial to such sunny spots as the ancient cornfield, where pines and scrub oaks will give no hint of bloom for weeks to come, and only dry lichens seem to flourish on the twig and chip-encumbered earth. Here the dainty cladonias thrive, the brown-fruited lifting tiny cups to the sun, while the scarlet-crested help this and the fringed variety to make crisp, tiny, fairy gardens that will show you great beauty if you will put your nose to the earth as the butterfly does in looking at them.

Perhaps these earliest spring butterflies sip from brown cups or draw from frost-moistened scarlet crests some potent elixir which warms the cockles of their wee hearts during the frigid nights of our Massachusetts Aprils. I hope so. I never catch them sipping honey at this time from any of the recognized sources. Perhaps the full flow of sap which is fairly bursting the young limbs of all trees now leaks enough to give syrup for the tasting, and they are thus more fortunate than their brethren, who will come later and dance attendance on lilac and milkweed. Maple sugar is better than honey.

There will be blossoms enough for them in the little hollow by and by, though at first it looked so brown and sere. Little by little, after my initiation at the antennæ of Pyrameis huntera, I began to see them, a rosette of green under my elbow, perhaps, or a serrate tip farther on. All under the brown grass the green rosettes of biennials and perennials have waited all winter long for a time like this. Out of the cores of growth built with slow labor in the increasing chill of autumn they are now sending new leaves, one after another in rapid succession, that top the brown grasses and begin to wreathe them with the tender green of spring.

There is joy in their very coloring as they stretch up to meet the enfolding warmth of the sun. Here an early buttercup waves a cleft and somewhat pinnate hand to me with jaunty assurance, though in the heart of its cluster is as yet no sign of the ascending stem that is to bear the glossy, yellow bloom aloft. Dandelion leaves shake their notched spears all about, proud that their buds are already visible, though still tucked down in the heart of the plant and showing no sign of yellow.

Here are the wee strawberry-like leaves of the cinquefoil, pale counterpart of the buttercup to which it looks up in gentle envy and admiration. The cinquefoil follows hard upon the heels of the violet, and already its buds are eager to be up and open. The linear root leaves of aster and goldenrod sit snug and green, growing a bit, but in no hurry to appear above the brown vegetation of last year. Their watch comes late, and there is no reason for them to be stirring thus early. And so the growth of lush green leaves is pushing up all over the dooryard of the old-time settler getting ahead of the lazy wood grasses that have hardly begun to put out tiny spears that eventually will stab through the old fog and help the others to make a new tapestry carpet for the empty woodland spaces.

Loveliest of all these now, and, indeed, the most germane to the spot, is the mullein. All winter long it has sat serene and self-sufficient, under the snow, armor-encased in pellucid ice, or in the bare, bitter nights when the stars of heaven were one solid coruscation of silver and the still cold bit very deep. Clad in kersey like the pioneer, its homespun clothing has defied the weather, holding the cold away from its thin leaf with all this padding of matted wool which makes the plant seem so rough and coarse. In the summer it will defy the fierce heat of the July sun with the same armor, sitting here with its feet in the burning sand and its tall spike tossing back the sunshine with a laugh from its golden efflorescence.

Like the pioneer, the mullein came from the Old World, well fitted to bear the rigors and defy the dangers of the New. Like him it took root, and its seed holds the land in the rough places, brave and beautiful, though rough-coated, tender at heart, and helpful always.

So, when the sun has gone over the western ridge and the north wind scouts have again mustered courage to invade the place, I leave the little hollow to the wilderness that still enfolds dreams of the one-time occupant. In its sheltered nooks some of the day’s golden warmth will remain, even until the sun comes again. I cannot tell where my busy butterflies will spend the night, but if I were one of them I should flip back into the dooryard of the pioneer’s homestead and cuddle down in the great heart of one of those rosettes of mullein leaves, there to slumber, warm and serene, wrapped to the eyes in its blankets of soft wool.