Page:Florida Trails as seen from Jacksonville to Key West and from November to April inclusive.djvu/365

 on the new wood are tiny clusters of flowers, each very prim and proper with four divisions of the white corolla, four stiff stamens set between and holding yellow heads at exact angles. All this should be as conventional as the Christmas decorations, but it is not. The waywardness of youth has got into the blood of the holly and the new sprigs are as jaunty and as airily conscious of the joy of living as any shrub you will find in a league of flat-woods and swamps.

Even the perfume of the holly blooms is wayward and just enough different in its originality to make you wonder if you will not come to dislike it, and then fall in love with it while you test it. The unobtrusiveness of the holly blooms is proof of their good taste, for this jaunty waywardness of the exultant spring does not appear till you come to know them well.

One looks in vain for the blooms of the jasmine in this region now. Six weeks ago they crowned all wild tangles with golden yellow and made cloth of gold all along the sunny forest aisles. Now all this bloom is gone and the jasmine, grown strangely wise and industrious, will do nothing in the fervid heat but climb in twining slenderness over new routes and plan flaunting displays of beauty for another winter-end. The wild cherokee roses, that shamed the gold with the purity of their white, have done better. There are hedge