How to Know the Wild Flowers

The book that taught America botany by color: find your flower under White, Yellow, Pink or Blue, and read its name, its haunts and its folklore — the first field guide organized the way people actually look.

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Meadow Lily. Wild Yellow Lily

Lilium Canadense. Lily Family.

Stem.--Two to five feet high. Leaves.--Whorled; lance-shaped. Flowers.--Yellow, spotted with reddish-brown; bell-shaped; two to three inches long. Perianth.--Of six recurved sepals, with a nectar-bearing furrow at their base. Stamens.--Six, with anthers loaded with brown pollen. Pistil.--One, with a three-lobed stigma.

What does the summer bring which is more enchanting than a sequestered wood-bordered meadow hung with a thousand of these delicate, nodding bells which look as though ready to tinkle at the least disturbance and sound an alarm among the flowers?

These too are true "lilies of the field," less gorgeous, less imposing than the Turks' caps, but with an unsurpassed grace and charm of their own. "Fairy-caps," these pointed blossoms are sometimes called; "witch-caps," would be more appropriate still. Indeed they would make dainty headgear for any of the dim inhabitants of Wonder-land.

The growth of this plant is very striking when seen at its best. The erect stem is surrounded with regular whorls of leaves, from the upper one of which curves a circle of long-stemmed, nodding flowers. They suggest an exquisite design for a church candelabra.

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