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Rh the Chrysanthemum, ‘The flower of the Four Seasons.’

Early March sees the Plum blossom ended, and the Peach blossom arrive—the flower dedicated to girls. The hills that have had the real snow on the ground, and the flower-snow in the air and on the trees, have lost the white to gain the green. The world is broad awake now, and birds are twittering. Daphnes, pink and white, have come, and pink Forsythias, and the fluffy golden balls of Edgeworthia papirifera, from which Japanese tough-fibred paper is made, and a multitude of little plants the spring brings to other lands. The Peach boughs flaunt their fiery signals, and the Cherry blossoms are beginning to cloud the sheltered groves of silver-grey trees, as if rosy mists lay low upon them. One may follow the Cherry blossoms, as I used to do strawberries when I was a child, from South to North, and get them at their best for many weeks, from Nagasaki to Chuzenji, or, longer yet, to Hakodate.

April sees the new shafts of Bamboo come up, like fairy telescopes to look at the stars of Sakura, the Cherry. The Columbine’s elfin bugles, loved wild flower of my youth, appears, and Cypripedium, wild Lily of the Valley, and Violets galore. And before the Sakura has vanished, towards the last weeks of April, the tree Pæony has begun. Like the Cherry it flowers in many shades of pink, and even in crimson.