When the ground was partially bare of snow, and a few warm days had dried its surface somewhat, it was pleasant to compare the first tender signs of the infant year just peeping forth with the stately beauty of the withered vegetation which had withstood the winter -- life-everlasting, goldenrods,
pinweeds, and graceful wild grasses, more obvious and interesting frequently than in summer even, as if their beauty was not ripe till then; even cotton-grass, cat-tails, mulleins, johnswort, hard-hack, meadow-sweet, and other strong-stemmed plants, those unexhausted granaries which entertain the earliest birds -- decent weeds, at least, which widowed Nature wears.
Abundant forbs were Agalinis tenuifolia (slender gerardia), Aster oolentangiensis, Comandra umbellata (star toadflax), Conyza canadensis (horseweed), Eupborbia corollata (flowering spurge), Fragaria virginiana, Lechea leggettii (
pinweed), Lupinus perennis (wild lupine), Phlox pilosa (prairie phlox), Potentilla simplex, Pleridium aquilinum, Rubus flagellaris, and Solidago nemoralis (gray goldenrod).
They are Betula populifolia (gray birch), Carex scabrata, Corallorrhiza trifida (coral root), Gerardia pedicularia ambigens (clammy false foxglove), Hemicarpa drummondii, Hippuris vulgaris (mare's tail), Lechea stricta (bush
pinweed), Lemna perpusilla (least duckweed), Linnaea borealis (twin flower), Lonicera canadensis (American fly honeysuckle), Oryzopsis pungens (short-horned rice grass), Panicum lucidum (bog panic grass), Psilocarya nitens (bald rush), Pyrola secunda (one-sided shinleaf), Scleria reticularis (netted nut rush), Shepherdia canadensis (russet buffaloberry), Trillium cernuum macranthum (nodding trillium), and Utricularia resu pinata (small purple bladderwort).