“While I have numbered bloodroot among May flowers, it often does appear in April, and before the wood anemone.  The silvery, white blossom pushes its head above the leaves in a fine fashion.  They are sensitive flowers, closing partly in cloudy weather, and actually dropping to pieces in a rainstorm or under severe winds.  The leaves are large, rather coarse, but pretty with their light under surfaces.  The stems have tinges of red on them, a dark red sap in the roots.  These roots bleed when disturbed.  The Indians used to stain their faces with this orange sap-blood.  You will find bloodroot growing in rich soil either in open woods or on rocky slopes.

“In a nice, rich, moist place put a few Jack-in-the pulpits.  This flower is much like a child’s jack-in-the-box.  It is so different from most of our plants that it has the effect of the joker in a pack of cards.  Push back the flap over Jack’s face and you will see a club like a policeman’s billy.  Along this club the inconspicuous flowers are borne.  Later, in the fall, the fruit forms, and inside, instead of rather uninteresting flowers, are bright red berries.  So Jack jokes again.

“There is always a great feeling of joy when the first trilliums, or wake robins, appear.  Walking in the deep, moist woods suddenly one sees a mass of big leaves and white flowers.  The same irresistably lovely trilliums have come again.  Three big leaves, then a flower stalk shooting up from the centre of this whorl of leaves, and on top the crowning glory—­the three-petaled trillium flower.  A fragrant white or pink form is called the nodding wake robin.  These in a glance tell their wishes.  The plant sometimes is nearly two feet high.  So a clump of these could easily go toward the back of the wild-flower garden in shade and moist soil.

“Another wild flower of striking beauty is the May apple or mandrake.  It comes very early in May, often in April.  This plant grows to about the same height as the trillium.  Only the big spreading leaves of the mandrake are visible at first sight.  Beneath these, and daintily hung in the junction of the leaf stalks, is the lovely, waxy, white blossom.  Late after the fading of the blossom the fruit appears.  So its name of May apple comes from this fruit, which has a sickly sweet taste.  The leaf and stalk part of the May apple are of a poisonous nature.  This flower, too, likes rather low, moist, shaded places.

“The false Solomon’s seal is found in woods where moisture is.  During June and July this plant is in blossom.  After the white flowers the fruit, or berry, appears.  The berry changes from green, to white, to red.  There is a two-leaved Solomon’s seal called the false lily-of-the-valley which is found at this same time.  It has usually two little lily-like leaves and a blossom stalk running up from these.  Tiny fragrant flowers are borne on this stalk.  These plants grow in moist woods, also.  One might plant these two near together in the garden, for the soil conditions are the same for both.