Earlier in those woods, the spring blossoms were everywhere in a carpel of spring beauties and anemones. Now as the procession of spring moved inexorably onward and April departed and May came on, the earliest flowers stopped blooming, formed seeds, and disappeared. In their place, the woods floor has become carpeted with greenery greenery of the wild ginger and young nettles, the greenery of honewort and white asters, with the flowers of wild geranium and the last pale blossoms of the blue phlox, bleached almost white now and tenuous in the shade. The cardinals are nesting in the tangle of green brier festooned in a wahoo tree: a Carolina wren is nesting under an old stump; there are young squirrels up in the hollow of the elm; and in a broad-spreading sycamore there is a nest recently vacated by a family of great horned owls.

Osmorhiza longistylis ( Torr. | DC.

May - June Woods.

Below, in the shadowed greenery of the woods, the white froth of sweet cicely has come into bloom. It is late May and the sweet cicely, marking a certain point in a certain cycle, indicates that now indeed it is almost summer.

Sweet cicely is a member of the Parsley family and has, in common with bo many members of that family, a plea-ant. aromatic quality which gives it distinction. The soft, dark green, finely downy leave- when crushed have an odor of licorice or anise; so do the stems, and the roots are even more aromatic.

In late summer the seeds are ripe. These are among the brotherhood of stick-tights - long, dark, slightly curved fruits with recurved prickles which catch on anything which passes by, and in this way the seeds are transported to other places.