| Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Prose Works. 1892. |
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| I. Specimen Days |
| 156. Wild Flowers |
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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. |
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