Found in grassy meadows, pastures, and waysides during May; generally in poor soil.

The slender, little, pale green flower-stems, from 2 to 6 inches in height, sometimes branch, bear but few leaves, and rise from a foot-tuffet of leaves.

These foot-leaves are very small, with little rounded tips, while the stem-leaves are still smaller, long, narrow, and clasping in pairs. They are entire, thin, and light green.

The flower has a tiny 4-parted, green calyx, and a tubular corolla which spreads at the top into a 4-pointed star; very delicate in texture, and varying from pure white to a deep china blue, with a dainty ring of yellow in the center.

A very communistic plant is the Innocence, growing in great patches along pasture fences and in meadow rifts and hollows, powdering the greening slopes of early May with its many blossoms like a belated spring snow-fall. Its buds droop, but the opened flowers lift up their faces to reflect the sky; its calices hug the corollas, and after they have fallen still guard the enlarged oval seed-boxes. It is not unusual to find 3- or 5-pointed stars, and even 6- or 7-pointed variations are occasionally discoverable. Tufts of seedlings found in the late autumn will flower all winter, if well-potted and watered and given plenty of fresh air.