Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/368

356 and resembles the yucca or Spanish bayonet of the southern counties, the small, greenish-white flowers being borne in a dense panicle on the summit of a stout stem, from three to seven feet in height. The long, narrow leaves are smooth and grass like, and are suggestive of corn or sugar cane. Close at hand, the spirea, or steeple-bush, waves high in air its feathery white or



magenta plumes; and beyond are thickets of wild plums and hazelnuts, mingled with low bushes of thimbleberries, huckleberries, and large, prickly gooseberries.

There are a number of roadside and pasture plants, known by farmers as "weeds," which nevertheless seem to have imbibed the very spirit of midsummer. Among them are included the dainty evening primose (Enothera biennis); the clematis, or "virgin's bower," festooning itself gracefully from tree to tree, with the wild grape and ivy; the milkweed (Asclepias), with its dull pink flowers and big, oval seed pods, filled with brown seeds and silky white down; the yellow sunflower; the flame-colored Castelleia, or "Indian's paint brush"; the golden-rod, three to six