HARBINGER OF SPRING (Erigenia bulbosa), a small North American plant of the parsley family (Umbelliferae), native to moist low woods from southern Ontario to Minnesota and south ward to Pennsylvania, Alabama and Missouri. It is a low, smooth, almost stemless perennial, rising from a deep round tuber and bearing near the ground from two to f our compound leaves thrice divided into narrow leaflets and a flower-stalk (scape), 3 to 9 in. high, terminating in small umbellate clusters of white flowers. In the southern part of its range the plant blooms as early as February and at the north in April, whence its name. It is somewhat rare and local in many sections but is especially abundant in the vicinity of Washington, D.C.