Preface
List of Illustrations
Blue to Purple Flowers
Magenta to Pink Flowers
White and Greenish Flowers
Yellow and Orange Flowers
Red and Indefinites
Appendices:
Fragrant Flowers or Leaves
Unpleasantly Scented
Plants and Shrubs Conspicuous in Fruit
Plant Families Represented
"Let us content ourselves no longer with being mere 'botanists' -
historians of structural facts. The flowers are not mere comely
or curious vegetable creations, with colors, odors, petals,
stamens and innumerable technical attributes. The wonted insight
alike of scientist, philosopher, theologian, and dreamer is now
repudiated in the new revelation. Beauty is not 'its own excuse
for being,' nor was fragrance ever 'wasted on the desert air.'
The seer has at last heard and interpreted the voice in the
wilderness. The flower is no longer a simple passive victim in
the busy bee's sweet pillage, but rather a conscious being, with
hopes, aspirations and companionships. The insect is its
counterpart. Its fragrance is but a perfumed whisper of welcome,
its color is as the wooing blush and rosy lip, its portals are
decked for his coming, and its sweet hospitalities humored to his
tarrying; and as it speeds its parting affinity, rests content
that its life's consummation has been fulfilled." - William
Hamilton Gibson.
"I often think, when working over my plants, of what Linnaeus
once said of the unfolding of a blossom: 'I saw God in His glory
passing near me, and bowed my head in worship.' The scientific
aspect of the same thought has been put into words by Tennyson:
'Flower in the crannied wall
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all in my hand
Little flower, - but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.'
No deeper thought was ever uttered by poet. For in this world of
plants, which, with its magician, chlorophyll, conjuring with
sunbeams, is ceaselessly at work bringing life out of death, - in
this quiet vegetable world we may find the elementary principles
of all life in almost visible operation." - JOHN FISKE in
"Through Nature to God."