Their faint fragrance rather suggests a
tulip; and as for the bulb, which in some of the lily-kin has
tooth-like scales, it is in this case a smooth, egg-shaped corm,
producing little round offsets from its base. Much fault is also
found with another name on the plea that the curiously mottled
and delicately pencilled leaves bring to mind, not a snake's
tongue, but its skin, as they surely do. Whoever sees the sharp
purplish point of a young plant darting above ground in earliest
spring, however, at once sees the fitting application of adder's
tongue. But how few recognize their plant friends at all seasons
of the year!
Every one must have noticed the abundance of low-growing spring
flowers in deciduous woodlands, where, later in the year, after
the leaves overhead cast a heavy shade, so few blossoms are to be
found, because their light is seriously diminished. The thrifty
adder's tongue, by laying up nourishment in its storeroom
underground through the winter, is ready to send its leaves and
flower upward to take advantage of the sunlight the still naked
trees do not intercept, just as soon as the ground thaws.
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