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Yet it was a very nice little parlour when one got down to it, and it enjoyed winter and summer a perpetual twilight, since the light that crept through the leaded casement was tempered by a screen of flowerpots, which were old Barlow's particular care. There were no finer geraniums in all Grasmere than Barlow's, no bigger carnations or picotees, asters or arums.
But underneath their covert, in the shade, grey periwinkles wind among the snowy drift of allium. The narcissus sends its arrowy fragrance through the air, while, far and wide, red anemones burn like fire, with interchange of blue and lilac buds, white arums, orchises, and pink gladiolus.
A vase of arums stood on the writing-table, a cluster of strange-hued carnations on the stand at his elbow, and from bowls of glass and porcelain clumps of freesia-bulbs diffused their melting fragrance. The fact implied acres of glass but that was the least interesting part of it.
Never was a spot more variously flowery: primroses yellow, lilac white, violets of either hue, cowslips, oxslips, arums, orchises, wild hyacinths, ground ivy, pansies, strawberries, heart's-ease, formed a small part of the Flora of that wild hedgerow.
The tides are extremely intricate throughout all the infinite channels and creeks which intersect the lands of the Amazons delta. The moon now broke forth and lighted up the trunks of colossal trees, the leaves of monstrous Jupati palms which arched over the creek, and revealed groups of arborescent arums standing like rows of spectres on its banks.
The wintry weather passed away with its storms and continuous rains and floods, which hindered the progress of the great lode or drain, and then came the spring sunshine, with the lads waking up to the fact that here and there the arums were thrusting up their glossy-green spathes, that the celandines were out like yellow stars, and that the rustling reeds left uncut had been snapped off and beaten down, and had rotted in the water, and that from among them the young shoots of the fresh crop were beginning to peep.
Here are seen tillandsias and bromeliaceae, like the crowns of huge pineapples; large climbing arums, with their dark green and arrow-head shaped leaves, forming fantastic and graceful ornaments swinging in mid-air; while huge-leaved ferns and other parasites cling to the stems up to the very highest branches.
Occasionally, however, as in the cypripedium and in certain of the arums, or "jack-in-the-pulpit," and aristolochias, the welcome becomes somewhat aggressive, the guest being forcibly detained awhile after tea, or, as in the case of our milkweed, occasionally entrapped for life. From this companionable point of view let us now look again at the strange curved stamen of the sage.
As he drew near the bottom of the gorge he saw that on the borders of the stream, wherever the soil was moist, grew thousands upon thousands of white arums, "pig lilies" as they call them in Africa, which were now in full bloom. He had noticed these lilies from above, but thence, owing to the distance, they seemed so small that he took them for everlastings or anemones.
We are getting amongst the springs, and must turn back. Round this corner, where on ledges like fairy terraces the orchises and arums grow, and we emerge suddenly on a new side of the dell, just fronting the small homestead of our good neighbour Farmer Allen.
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