Now, too, ere the trees come into leaf, is the
time to seek the boxwood, called, I hope improperly, by the ominous name
of the Southern dogwood. It is worth an afternoon's ramble to come upon
one of those trees, standing in an open glade of the forest, a pyramid
of white or cream-colored blossoms. Before a leaf is on the tree, it
clothes itself in this lovely livery, and at a little distance seems
like a snowy cloud rather than a shrub.
But with June comes the most exquisite of our New England wild-flowers,
the arethusa, or swamp-pink, as it is often styled, to the great
confusion of its delicate, high-born nature with the great, vulgar,
flaunting azalea. When June comes,--when the clethra is heaped with its
bee-beloved blossoms, and the grass is green and bright as never again
in the year, then the arethusa is to be sought. A most unaccountable
flower, of all shades, from pale pink to a deep purple, with a lovely
shape that I can liken to nothing so nearly as the _fleur-de-lis_ on
French escutcheons, it has a delicate, yet powerful, aromatic scent, as
if it were an estray from the tropics. One specimen, snowy white, I have
seen, and can tell you where to find another.
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