six hundred insects, representing thirty-eight distinct species,
on a patch of wild hyacinths in Illinois.

The bulb of a MEDITERRANEAN SCILLA (S. maritima) furnishes the
sourish-sweet syrup of squills used in medicine for bronchial
troubles.


The GRAPE HYACINTH (Muscari botrycides), also known as Baby's
Breath, because of its delicate faint fragrance, escapes from
gardens at slight encouragement to grow wild in the roadsides and
meadows from Massachusetts to Virginia and westward to Ohio. Its
tiny, deep-blue, globular flowers, stiffly set around a fleshy
scape that rises between erect, blade-like, channeled leaves,
appear spring after spring wherever the small bulbs have been
planted. On the east end of Long Island there are certain meadows
literally blued with the little runaways.


PURPLE TRILLIUM, ILL-SCENTED WAKE-ROBIN or BIRTH-ROOT
(Trillium erectum) Lily-of-the-Valley family

Flowers - Solitary, dark, dull purple, or purplish red; rarely
greenish, white, or pinkish; on erect or slightly inclined
footstalk. Calyx of 3 spreading sepals, 1 to 1 1/2 in. long, or
about length of 3 pointed, oval petals; stamens 6; anthers longer
than filaments; pistil spreading into 3 short, recurved stigmas.
Stem: Stout, 8 to i6 in. high, from tuber-like rootstock. Leaves:
In a whorl of 3; broadly ovate, abruptly pointed, netted-veined.
Fruit: A 6-angled, ovate, reddish berry.