WCP437

[1]

The Hamilton, Washington, D. C.¹

Feb^y.. 14th 1887

My dear Annie²

I wrote Violet^3,4 on Saturday & did not intend to write to you for another week or two but I have just done up a box of plants & want to tell you how I got them. On Sunday (yesterday) Prof. Ward⁵ — a botanist here and one of the most intellectual men in Washington, who is a great radical and half socialist & agrees with me in many things — took me a walk to show me the woods & streams near Washington. We walked about 4 miles through woods over hilly ground with little ravines & a ^swift stream about as large as the Wey which they call here a creek. It had been freezing hard the last two nights but the sun was bright & we had a beautiful walk. The whole country here is gneiss — a kind of [2] granite full of mica which decomposes into a soft bouncy sand something like of that on our road under the cliff, but far richer & better for plants. Going along Mr. Ward told me the names of all the trees, but they are so numerous & so puzzling without their leaves that it was impossible for me to recognise many of them. The largest are the tulip trees — some bigger than that large one at Dorking with walnuts and hickories and 10 or 12 different species of oaks, also chestnuts, a beech, willows and poplars. The woods were very thickly strewn with dead leaves and one of the first things we found growing among moss on a bank was the trailing arbutus (Epigaea repens) of which I got a nice root. It is I think very difficult to grow & if you were to take it to Miss Jekyll⁶ I think she would be pleased to try it. It has good sized roundish evergreen leaves. Then we found another pretty plant the spotted wintergreen, (Chimaphila maculata,) [3] you will know this by the narrow spotted leaves, & one plant has the dead flower stalk showing its twin flower. I do not think this is in any of the English lists and as there are several you might take one to Miss J. Then we came upon the beautiful little orchis (Goodyera pubescens) with beautiful veined leaves called here the rattlesnake plantain. I have sent 5 .. 6 plants of this so you can give one or two to Miss J. & to your father⁶for whom also I have sent the curious broad leaved sedge (Carex platyphylla). Then we found a plant or two of a curious lily-like plant with white bulbs & roots called the blazing-star (Chamaelirium Carolinianum and said to be very pretty. These will all want shade and grow in fine leaf mould and coarse sand, and I should think they would be better potted & kept in the greenhouse till they start to grow. Of course I enquired for ferns for you, but only the evergreen sorts [4] could be seen owing to the quantity of dead leaves. The most common is the one I sent you from Boston but after a good deal of searching we got two other species. The large one is Aspidium marginale a pretty fern which I think you have not got about the size of our Thelypteris, only one plant of this. The other is a curious little fern allied to our common maidenhair but quite different, it is Asplenium ebeneum, from its jet black stalks and it grows 6 – 8 inches high in summer. Of this I have sent four or five plants, and I expect they will arrive in good order as after some trouble I have got a biscuit tin to pack them in, & with a little moss and fronds cut off the large fern the box is just filled. There were plenty of Hepaticas in the woods and we found a couple of flowers wh. I enclose. In March and April they are said to be abundant. If it is fine next Sunday I shall go again [5] as it is the only day Mr. Ward can come. We also saw a curious arum with red and green spotted spathe growing in a sphagnum bog. It is a thicker plant than othe ours with two or three half opened spathes on the same plant, and a little round ball inside instead of our usual "lord and lady" spike. Its name is Symplocarpus foetidus, or the Skunk Cabbage. There was also a curious little orobanche called Beech-drops which grows on the roots of beech trees.

Wild roses are scarce, but the the Smilax grows with slender green prickly stems exactly like a small rose bush and in similar places. In some places the woods were full of Kalmias and they are said to be lovely when in bloom, which I saw a wild one with a stem nearly as a thick as my leg growing up to the top of a high tree. It is [6] very interesting walking in woods where everything is new and curious, and will be still more so when summer comes on. Still there is curious ^{a certain} raggedness about everything. The fields are more like fallow fields there is so little grass ^{there are no hedges only tumble-down rail fences} and the woods do not seem so fine as our best though I dare say in summer when all the leaves are out they will be very beautiful. The great variety of trees and foliage will then be very interesting. If I had but plenty of lecturing to do I should like to stop here all the summer, but there seem to be so many scientific men here now ^{and in the numerous colleges all over America} who lecture, that there is very little demand. I almost begin to think that a good travelling agent would have been better, as it would have saved all this idleness [7] at all events. I will here add a list of the plants sent in the box.

Aspiduim marginale...larger fern

Asplenuem eleneuim. Small [fern]

Goodyera pubescens — veined left orchis

Chamdelirium Carolinianum — small lily "blazing star"

Carex platyphylla...Broad-leaved sedge.

Chimaphila maculata...Spotted-leaved winter green

Epigcea repens...hailing arbutus.

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Have you let the house or got a boarder? As I am making so little I hope you will have luck to save something towards some improvements in the house. The beautiful tree which has flowers like a foxglove (Paulowina imperialis) grows here 50 or 60 feet high in gardens, smothered with flowers , & must be a grand sight in summer. With kind remembrances to all friends I remain, your affectionate husband | Alfred R. Wallace [signature]