The most vivid colors are often found in the mold in jars of preserves that have been kept entirely in the dark. This mold is a vegetable growth.
In the spring one may notice early in the morning a bed of chickory in bloom; it is a clear, exquisite blue; by ten o’clock the blue will be very pale, by twelve the flowers are white, by one they are all folded up, to open the next day as richly blue as ever. The sun plays such tricks on blue cotton cloth. When it is exposed to the sun the blue vanishes, and when the cloth has been put away in the darkness the fled color returns. Other flowers besides chickory grow pale with the excess of light, just as some grow pale from darkness. The study of color in the plant world affords opportunity for interesting experiments.
Bryant calls June “flowery June,” Coleridge calls the month “leafy June”--it might also be called fragrant June, for it seems the natal month of most fragrant flowers. One may notice sometimes in Scotland such a rich, almost overwhelming fragrance on a ripple of wind that one will stop to consider its origin. The source is not far to seek; it is a bean field in full blossom.
Another very common and fragrant family of June blooming plants is that of the trefoil, or clover family. A field of common red clover in full blossom will rival in richness of perfume the famous Scotch bean field. The clover field is a blaze of beauty--full, round, rosy heads spread under the sunshine a cloth, not of gold, but of purplish pink, strong, healthy plants these, full of suggestions of vigor.
Across this field boom thousands of bumble bees, and here we are reminded that the bumble bee is the special partner of the red clover, carrying its pollen and paid by the honey from the deep cups. The red clover is not a native of America. It was introduced here, as in Australia, from England, but seems to have taken a special hold on the hearts of the people and upon the soil as well.
Each head of red clover is composed of hundreds of little florets, tube-shaped, each with its own calyx, each with its own nectary, honey-full and deeply hidden, each pouring its portion of perfume on the warm June air.
Another clover becoming naturalized, a stranger from afar, is the crimson or Hungarian clover. The head of the blossoms is not round, but long, shaped like the first joint of a forefinger. The color is rich, vivid crimson or blood-red. This is the clover so provided with tough hairs that it has proved injurious to cattle.