urely April, with her smiles anl[TN-1] tears, ought to be regarded
as a feminine month. Ovid has shown that she was not named from
_aperire_, to open, as some have supposed, but from Aphrodite, the Greek
name for Venus, goddess of beauty and mother of love. She is chaste, even
cold, but grows sweeter and more affectionate every day and her tears all
end in smiles. Her flowers are pure and mostly white, fitting for a
maiden. Look at the list (if the weather is warm):

White or whitish:--Rue-anemone, hepatica, spring beauty, blood-root,
toothwort, Dutchman's breeches, dog's tooth violet, wild ginger,
chickweed, Isopyrum, plantain-leaved everlasting, shepherd's purse,
shad-bush, wild strawberry, whitlow-grass, wind-flower, hackberry
(greenish white), false Solomon's seal, catnip, spring cress, wild black
currant, wild plum.

Yellow or yellowish:--Marsh marigold, creeping buttercup, marsh
buttercup, small-flowered crowfoot, dandelion, yellow woodsorrel,
bell-wort, star-grass, downy yellow violet, pappoose root, lousewort,
prickly ash, hop hornbeam, white oak, mossy-cup oak, butternut, sugar
maple.

Purple or blue:--Common blue violet, trillium (_recurvatum_ and
_erectum_) hepatica, Virginian cowslip (_lung-wort_ or _bluebells_),
woodsorrel, common blue phlox, ground plum.

Green:--The Indian turnip, and several of the sedges.

Pink:--Spring beauty, toothwort, dog's tooth violet, hepatica.

Scarlet:--Columbine.

From this list it ought to be plain that April is a dainty queen, wearing
a dress of cheerful green, a bodice of white, with violets in her hands,
pink in her cheeks, and a single scarlet columbine in her wealth of
golden hair, which indeed comes nearly being the portrait of Dione
herself. Or, as one of the poets has better described her:

_April stood with tearful face
With violets in her hands, and in her hair
Pale wild anemones; the fragrant lace
Half-parted from her breast, which seemed like fair,
Dawn-tinted mountain snow, smooth-drifted there._

In this long list of April flowers--some observers will be able to make
it still longer--there are many favorites. The pretty rue-anemone recalls
the tradition that Anemos, the wind, chose the delicate little flowers of
this family as the heralds of his coming in early spring. And in the
legend of Venus and Adonis the anemone is the flower that sprang from the
tears of the queen as she mourned the death of her loved one. Theocritus
pu