Hugh read this passage about hepatica from Spring
Wildflowers of the Northeast:
"There are many
things left for May, but nothing fairer, if as fair, as the first flower, the
hepatica. I find I have never admired this firstling half enough. When at the
maturity of its charms, it is certainly the gem of the woods" (p.188) The
flower has inspired several poetic tributes by Burroughs and others, among them
William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878):
Blue as the heaven
it gazes at,
Startling the
loiterer in the naked groves
With unexpected
beauty; for the time
Of blossoms and green leaves is
yet afar.
[The Burroughs quotations is from Signs
and Seasons, 1887, Houghton Mifflin, p. 188; quoted in Gracie, C, 2012, Spring
Wildflowers of the Northeast, Princeton University Press, p. 95]
Dale read passages from Henry David Thoreau's The Dispersion
of Seeds:
...these dense and stretching oak forests,
whose withered leaves now redden and rustle on the hills for many a New England
mile, were all planted by the labor of animals....
Consider what a vast work these forest
planters are doing! So far as our noblest hardwood forests are concerned,
the animals, especially squirrels and jays, are our greatest and almost our
only benefactors. It is to them that we owe this gift. It is not in
vain that a squirrel lives in almost every forest tree or hollow log or wall or
heap of stones....
And what is the
character of our gratitude to the squirrels...? Are they on our pension
list? Have we recognized their services? We regard them as
vermin.... We should be more civilized as well as humane if we recognized
once in a year by some symbolical ceremony the part which the squirrel plays in
the economy of Nature.
[Quoted in Clifford Blizard's blog, the Atlanta Nature
Examiner for July 22, 2010.]
