Contents
-BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Prose Works. 1892.
I. Specimen Days
156. Wild Flowers
THIS has been and is yet a great season for wild flowers; oceans of them line the roads through the woods, border the edges of the water-runlets, grow all along the old fences, and are scatter’d in profusion over the fields. An eight-petal’d blossom of gold-yellow clear and bright, with a brown tuft in the middle, nearly as large as a silver half-dollar, is very common; yesterday on a long drive I noticed it thickly lining the borders of the brooks everywhere. Then there is a beautiful weed cover’d with blue flowers, (the blue of the old Chinese teacups treasur’d by our grand-aunts,) I am continually stopping to admire—a little larger than a dime, and very plentiful. White, however, is the prevailing color. The wild carrot I have spoken of; also the fragrant life-everlasting. But there are all hues and beauties, especially on the frequent tracts of half-open scrub-oak and dwarf-cedar hereabout—wild asters of all colors. Notwithstanding the frost-touch the hardy little chaps maintain themselves in all their bloom. The tree-leaves, too, some of them are beginning to turn yellow or drab or dull green. The deep wine-color of the sumachs and gum-trees is already visible, and the straw-color of the dog-wood and beech. Let me give the names of some of these perennial blossoms and friendly weeds I have made acquaintance with hereabout one season or another in my walks:wild azalea,dandelions,wild honeysuckle,yarrow,wild roses,coreopsis,golden rod,wild pea,larkspur,woodbine,early crocus,elderberry,sweet flag, (great patches of it,)poke-weed,creeper, trumpet-flower,sun-flower,scented marjoram,chamomile,snakeroot,violets,Solomon’s seal,clematis,sweet balm,bloodroot,mint, (great plenty,)swamp magnolia,wild geranium,milk-weed,wild heliotrope,wild daisy, (plenty,)burdock,wild chrysanthemum.