He carefully gets the meadow hay and
the more nutritious grasses which grow next to that, but he leaves this
fine purple mist for the walker's harvest,--fodder for his fancy stock.
Higher up the hill, perchance, grow also Blackberries, John's-Wort, and
neglected, withered, and wiry June-Grass. How fortunate that it grows in
such places, and not in the midst of the rank grasses which are annually
cut! Nature thus keeps use and beauty distinct. I know many such
localities, where it does not fail to present itself annually, and paint
the earth with its blush. It grows on the gentle slopes, either in a
continuous patch or in scattered and rounded tufts a foot in diameter, and
it lasts till it is killed by the first smart frosts.
In most plants the corolla or calyx is the part which attains the highest
color, and is the most attractive; in many it is the seed-vessel or fruit;
in others, as the Red Maple, the leaves; and in others still it is the
very culm itself which is the principal flower or blooming part.
The last is especially the case with the Poke or Garget (_Phytolacca
decandra_). Some which stand under our cliffs quite dazzle me with their
purple stems now and early in September. They are as interesting to me as
most flowers, and one of the most important fruits of our autumn. Every
part is flower, (or fruit,) such is its superfluity of color,--stem,
branch, peduncle, pedicel, petiole, and even the at length yellowish
purple-veined leaves. Its cylindrical racemes of berries of various hues,
from green to dark purple, six or seven inches long, are gracefully
drooping on all sides, offering repasts to the birds; and even the sepals
from which the birds have picked the berries are a brilliant lake-red,
with crimson flame-like reflections, equal to anything of the kind,--all
on fire with ripeness. Hence the _lacca_, from _lac_, lake. There are at
the same time flower-buds, flowers, green berries, dark purple or ripe
ones, and these flower-like sepals, all on the same plant.
We love to see any redness in the vegetation of the temperate zone. It is
the color of colors. This plant speaks to our blood. It asks a bright sun
on it to make it show to best advantage, and it must be seen at this
season of the year. On warm hillsides its stems are ripe by the
twenty-third of August. At that date I walked through a beautiful grove of
them, six or seven feet high, on the side of one of our cliffs, where they
ripen early. Quite to the ground they were a deep brilliant purple with a
bloom, contrasting with the still clear green leaves. It appears a rare
triumph of Nature to have produced and perfected such a plant, as if this
were enough for a summer. What a perfect maturity it arrives at! It is the
emblem of a successful life concluded by a death not premature, which is
an ornament to Nature. What if we were to mature as perfectly, root and
branch, glowing in the midst of our decay, like the Poke! I confess that
it excites me to behold them. I cut one for a cane, for I would fain
handle and lean on it. I love to press the berries between my fingers, and
see their juice staining my hand. To walk amid these upright, branching
casks of purple wine, which retain and diffuse a sunset glow, tasting each
one with your eye, instead of counting the pipes on a London dock, what a
privilege! For Nature's vintage is not confined to the vine. Our poets
have sung of wine, the product of a foreign plant which commonly they
never saw, as if our own plants had no juice in them more than the
singers.
