All in all, he was a
wild-looking bird, if ever I saw one.
I was no sooner in St. Augustine, of course, than my eyes were open for
wild flowers. Perhaps I felt a little disappointed. Certainly the land
was not ablaze with color. In the grass about the old fort fhere was
plenty of the yellow oxalis and the creeping white houstonia; and from a
crevice in the wall, out of reach, leaned a stalk of goldenrod in full
bloom. The reader may smile, if he will, but this last flower was a
surprise and a stumbling-block. A vernal goldenrod! Dr. Chapman's Flora
made no mention of such an anomaly. Sow thistles, too, looked strangely
anachronistic. I had never thought of them as harbingers of springtime.
The truth did not break upon me till a week or so afterward. Then, on
the way to the beach at Daytona, where the pleasant peninsula road
traverses a thick forest of short-leaved pines, every tree of which
leans heavily inland at the same angle ("the leaning pines of Daytona,"
I always said to myself, as I passed), I came upon some white
beggar's-ticks,--like daisies; and as I stopped to see what they were,
I noticed the presence of ripe seeds. The plant had been in flower a
long time. And then I laughed at my own dullness. It fairly deserved a
medal. As if, even in Massachusetts, autumnal flowers--the groundsel,
at least--did not sometimes persist in blossoming far into the winter! A
day or two after this, I saw a mullein stalk still presenting arms, as
it were (the mullein, always looks the soldier to me), with one bright
flower.
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