meet the resplendent sunrise! Every moment it grows more and more
beautiful. I think for wondrous variety, for certain picturesque
qualities, for color and form and a subtle mystery of character,
Poppies seem, on the whole, the most satisfactory flowers among the
annuals. There is absolutely no limit to their variety of color. They
are the tenderest lilac, the deepest crimson, richest scarlet, white
with softest suffusion of rose; all shades of rose, clear light pink
with sea-green centre, the anthers in a golden halo about it; black
and fire-color; red that is deepened to black, with gray reflections;
cherry-color, with a cross of creamy white at the bottom of the cup,
and round its central altar of ineffable golden green again the halo
of yellow anthers; purple, with rich splashes of a deeper shade of the
same color, with grayish white rays about the centre; all shades of
lavender and lilac; exquisite smoke-color, in some cases delicately
touched and freaked with red; some pure light gray, some of these gray
ones edged with crimson or scarlet; there are all tints of mauve. To
tell all the combinations of their wonderful hues, or even half, would
be quite impossible, from the simple transparent scarlet bell of the
wild Poppy to the marvelous pure white, the wonder of which no tongue
can tell. Oh, these white Poppies, some with petals more delicate than
the finest tissue paper, with centres of bright gold, some of thicker
quality, large, shell-like petals, almost ribbed in their effect,
their green knob in the middle like a boss upon a shield, rayed about
with beautiful grayish yellow stamens, as in the kind called the
Bride. Others--they call this kind the Snowdrift--have thick double
flowers, deeply cut and fringed at the edges, the most opaque white,
and full of exquisite shadows. Then there are the Icelanders, which
Lieutenant Peary found making gay the frosty fields of Greenland, in
buttercup-yellow and orange and white; the great Orientals, gorgeous
beyond expression; the immense single white California variety. I could
not begin to name them all in the longest summer’s day! The Thorn
Poppy, Argemone, is a fascinating variety, most quaint in method of
growth and most decorative. As for the Shirleys, they are children of
the dawn, and inherit all its delicate, vivid, delicious suffusions of
rose-color in every conceivable shade. Of the Poppy one of the great
masters of English prose discourses in this wise. Speaking of the
common wild Poppy of the English fields, which grows broadcast also
over most of Europe, he says: “The splendor of it is proud, almost
insolently so,” which immediately brings to mind Browning’s lines in
“Sordello,”--
“The Poppy’s red effrontery,
Till autumn spoils its fleering quite with rain,
And portionless, a dry, brown, rattling crane
Protrudes.”
[Illustration: _Poppy Bank in the Early Morning_]
Papaver Rhœas is the common wild scarlet Poppy that both these writers
describe. John Ruskin says: “I have in my hand a small red Poppy
which I gathered on Whit Sunday in the palace of the Cæsars. It is
an intensely simple, intensely floral flower. All silk and flame, a
scarlet cup, perfect edged all round, seen among the wild grass far
away like a burning coal fallen from Heaven’s altars. You cannot have
a more complete, a more stainless type of flower absolute; inside
and outside, all flower. No sparing of color anywhere, no outside
coarsenesses, no interior secrecies, open as the sunshine that creates
it; fine finished on both sides, down to the extremest point of
insertion on its narrow stalk, and robed in the purple of the Cæsars....
“Literally so. That Poppy scarlet, so far as could be painted by mortal
hand, for mortal king, stays yet, against the sun and wind and rain, on
the walls of the house of Augustus, a hundred yards from the spot where
I gathered the weed of its desolation.... The flower in my hand is a
poverty _stricken_ Poppy, I was going to write, poverty _strengthened_
Poppy, I mean. On richer ground it would have gushed into flaunting
breadth of untenable purple; flapped its inconsistent scarlet vaguely
to the wind; dropped the pride of its petals over my hand in an hour
after I gathered it. But this little rough-bred thing ... is as bright
and strong to-day as yesterday.... What outline its petals really have
is little shown in their crumpled fluttering, but that very crumpling
arises from a fine floral character which we do not enough value in
them. We usually think of a Poppy as a coarse flower; but it is the
most transparent and delicate of all the blossoms of the field. The
rest, nearly all of them, depend on the texture of their surfaces for
color. But the Poppy is painted glass; it never glows so brightly as
when the sun shines through it. Wherever it is seen, against the light
or with the light, always it is a flame, and warms the wind like a
blown ruby.... Gather a green Poppy bud, just when it shows the scarlet
line at its side, break it open and unpack the Poppy. The whole flower
is there complete in size and color, its stamens full grown, but all
packed so closely that the fine silk of the petals is crushed into a
million of wrinkles. When the flower opens, it seems a relief from
torture; the two imprisoning green leaves are shaken to the ground, the
aggrieved corolla smooths itself in the sun and comforts itself as best
it can, but remains crushed and hurt to the end of its days.”
I know of no flower that has so many charming tricks and manners,
none with a method of growth more picturesque and fascinating. The
stalks often take a curve, a twist from some current of air or some
impediment, and the fine stems will turn and bend in all sorts of
graceful ways, but the bud is always held erect when the time comes for
it to blossom. Ruskin quotes Lindley’s definition of what constitutes
a Poppy, which he thinks “might stand.” This is it: “A Poppy is a
flower which has either four or six petals, and two or more treasuries
united in one, containing a milky, stupefying fluid in its stalks and
leaves, and always throwing away its calyx when it blossoms.”
I muse over their seed-pods, those supremely graceful urns that are
wrought with such matchless elegance of shape, and think what strange
power they hold within. Sleep is there, and Death his brother,
imprisoned in those mystic sealed cups. There is a hint of their
mystery in their shape of sombre beauty, but never a suggestion in
the fluttering blossom; it is the gayest flower that blows. In the
more delicate varieties the stalks are so slender, yet so strong, like
fine grass stems, when you examine them you wonder how they hold even
the light weight of the flower so firmly and proudly erect. They are
clothed with the finest of fine hairs up and down the stalks, and over
the green calyx, especially in the Iceland varieties, where these hairs
are of a lovely red-brown color and add much to their beauty.
It is plain to see, as one gazes over the Poppy beds on some sweet
evening at sunset, what buds will bloom in the joy of next morning’s
first sunbeams, for these will be lifting themselves heavenward, slowly
and silently, but surely. To stand by the beds at sunrise and see the
flowers awake is a heavenly delight. As the first long, low rays of
the sun strike the buds, you know they feel the signal! A light air
stirs among them; you lift your eyes, perhaps to look at a rosy cloud
or follow the flight of a caroling bird, and when you look back again,
lo! the calyx has fallen from the largest bud and lies on the ground,
two half transparent, light green shells, leaving the flower petals
wrinkled in a thousand folds, just released from their close pressure.
A moment more and they are unclosing before your eyes. They flutter out
on the gentle breeze like silken banners to the sun, and such a color!
The orange of the Iceland Poppy is the most ineffable color; it “warms
the wind” indeed! I know no tint like it; it is orange dashed with
carmine, most like the reddest coals of an intensely burning fire. Look
at this exquisite cup: the wind has blown nearly smooth the crinkled
petals; these, where they meet in the centre, melt into a delicate
greenish yellow. In the heart of the blossom rises a round green altar,
its sides penciled with nine black lines, and a nine-rayed star of
yellow velvet clasps the flat, pure green top. From the base of this
altar springs the wreath of stamens and anthers; the inner circle of
these is generally white, the outer yellow, and all held high and clear
within the cup. The radiant effect of this arrangement against the
living red cannot be told.
The Californias put out their clean, polished, pointed buds straight
up to the sun from the first, but all the others have this fashion of
drooping theirs till the evening before they blow. There is a kind of
triumph in the way they do this, lifting their treasured splendor yet
safe within its clasping calyx to be ready to meet the first beams of
the day.
The Orientals are glorious, even in the victorious family of Poppies.
Ruskin has a chapter on “The Rending of Leaves.” I always think of it
when I see the large, hairy, rich green leaves of this variety, which
are deeply “rent,” almost the whole width of the leaf to the midrib.
These leaves grow somewhat after the fashion of a Dandelion, spreading
several feet in all directions from the centre, which sends up in June
immense flower-stalks crowned with heavy apple-like buds, that elongate
as they increase in size, till some morning the thick calyx breaks and
falls, and the great scarlet flags of the flower unfold. There is a
kind of angry brilliance about it, a sombre and startling magnificence.
Its large petals are splashed near the base with broad, irregular
spots of black-purple, as if they had been struck with a brush full
of color. The seed-pod, rising fully an inch high in the centre, is
of a luminous, indescribable shade of green, and folded over its top,
a third of its height, is a cap of rich lavender, laid down in points
evenly about the crown. On the centre of this is a little knob of deep
purple velvet, from which eleven rays of the same color curve over the
top and into each point of the lavender cap. And round this wonderful
seed-pod, with its wealth of elaborate ornament, is a thick girdle of
stamens half an inch deep, with row upon row and circle within circle
of anthers covered with dust of splendid dusky purple, and held each
upon a slender thread of deeper purple still. It is simply superb,
and when the great bush is ablaze with these flowers it is indeed a
conflagration of color. “The fire-engines always turn out when my
Orientals blaze up on the hillside,” writes a flower-loving friend to
me. No garden should be without these, for they flourish with the least
care, are perfectly hardy, and never fail to blossom generously.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
That every plant should select only its own colors and forms from
the great laboratory of Nature has always seemed to me a very
wonderful thing. Each plant takes from its surroundings just those
qualities which will produce its own especial characteristics and no
others, never hesitating and never making a mistake. For instance,
the California Poppies, if left to themselves, will take yellow of
many resplendent shades for their color, and never vary their cool,
gray-green, red-tipped, foliage; the Peacock Poppy will be always
scarlet-crimson, with a black spot rimmed with white in every petal;
the Corn Poppy will be always clear scarlet; the Bride a miracle
of lustrous white, and so on. Runge, a noted chemist, says: “A
plant is a great chemist: it distinguishes and separates substances
more definitely and accurately than man can, with all his skill,
his intelligence, and his appliances.... The little Daisy, which
has painted its ‘wee crimson-tipped flowers,’ puts the chemist and
scientific man to shame, for it has produced its leaf and stem and
flowers, and has dyed these with their bright colors from materials
which he can never change with all his arts.”
By what power do they know how to select each its own hue and shape,
when earth and air hold all the tints and forms that the Creator has
invented? The subtle knowledge of plants, instinct perhaps would be a
better word, is astonishing. If you dig a hole in the ground and put
into it a Rosebush, filling one side of the hole with rich earth and
the other with poor soil, every root of that Rosebush will leave the
poor half to inhabit the rich and nourishing portion. That is a matter
of course, but the instinct of the Rose is something to think about,
nevertheless.
Some one has said, speaking of a tree, “What an immense amount of
vitally organized material has been here gathered together! It is God’s
own architecture! This mass of vegetable matter is only earth and air
that have undergone transmutation. The material alike of wandering
zephyrs and rushing storms, of gently descending night-dews and angry
thunder-showers has been _here, on this spot_, metamorphosed.”
And I should add that into this piece of architecture God has breathed
a vital spark, almost a mind, so remarkable is the intelligent action
often manifested in many plants and trees.
A famous Frenchman, Camille Flammarion, says: “I know a maple-tree
which was dying on the ruins of an old wall, a few feet from good
rich earth (the soil in a ditch), and which in despair threw out a
venturesome root, reached the coveted earth, buried itself there, and
gained a solid footing, so that by degrees, although a motionless
thing, it changed its place, let its original roots die, and lived
resuscitated upon the organ that had set it free. I have known elms
which were going to eat up the soil of a fertile field, whose food had
been cut off from them by a wide ditch, and who, therefore, determined
to make their uncut roots pass under the ditch. They succeeded, and
returned to their regular food, much to the cultivator’s astonishment.
I know an heroic Jasmine which went eight times through a board which
kept the light away from it, and which a teasing observer would put
back in the shade, hoping so to wear out the flower’s energy, but he
did not succeed.”
This happened in France, but here in New England I myself know of a
great Wistaria which grew over one side of a fine old house in an
enchanting garden, and which did something quite as wonderful. It was a
triumph of a vine! The butt or stump, where it emerged from the ground,
was a foot in diameter, and its branches covered one side of the house,
a space of thirty feet by thirty feet. So large a vine required a
great deal of water, so it sent its roots down eight feet under the
foundation of the house, passed along under the brick floor of the
dairy, a distance of fifteen feet, making a solid mat of roots under
the whole floor, reached the well and went straight through the cracks
and crevices of its stone wall to the desired moisture. An elm root in
the same garden went sixty feet or more under the foundation of the
house to that same well.
To quote another writer who has carefully observed these things:
“Plants have to the full extent of their necessities a power of
observation, of discrimination in the selection of their food, a
knowledge of where it is to be found, and the power to a considerable
extent to obtain it. For instance, if some animal’s remains are buried
in the garden, say twenty feet from the grapevine, the vine will know
it, and the underground part of the vine will at once change its
course and make a direct march for this new storehouse of food, and
upon reaching it will throw out an incredible number of roots for its
consumption.... A weeping willow was planted in a dry, gravelly soil
on the south side of a house, a situation in every respect unsuited
to this tree, which delights in a heavy moist soil; the result was
a slow, stunted growth. After a few years in which it barely lived,
it surprised its owner by a vigorous growth which was as astonishing
as pleasing, and the cause was looked for. It was found the roots in
search of food had traveled under the house a distance of some thirty
feet to the well, where they took a downward course till they reached
the water that furnished the moisture which is essential to the growth
of this tree.
“The movements of the squash vine when pressed by hunger or thirst are
truly wonderful. During a severe drought if you place a basin of water
at night, say two feet to the left or the right of a strong vine, in
the morning it will be found bathing in the basin! Is not this an
indication of thought in the vine? Does it not indicate a knowledge in
the vine analogous to human understanding? ... There must be some agent
employed to bring the vine to the fountain....
“The more we study plant life the more we become convinced that life is
a unit, varying in form only, not in principle. Everything capable of
reproduction, growth, and development is governed by the same law, and
each is but a part of the unit we term life.”
Again to quote the famous Frenchman: “When I breathe the perfume of
a Rose,” he says, “when I admire the beauty of form, the grace of
this flower in its freshly opening bloom, what strikes me most is the
work of that hidden, unknown, mysterious force which rules over the
plant’s life and can direct it in the maintenance of its existence,
which chooses the proper molecules of air, water, and earth for its
nourishment, and which knows, above all, how to assimilate these
molecules and group them so delicately as to form this graceful stem,
these dainty green leaves, these soft pink petals, these exquisite
tints and delicious fragrance....
“This mysterious force is the animating principle of the plant. Put a
Lily seed, an acorn, a grain of wheat, and a peach-stone side by side
in the ground, each germ will build up its own organism and no other....
“A plant breathes, drinks, eats, selects, refuses, seeks, works, lives,
acts, according to its instincts. One does like a charm, another pines,
a third is nervous and agitated. The Sensitive Plant shivers and
droops its leaves at the slightest touch.”
Climbing plants show often a surprising degree of intelligence,
reaching out for support as if they had eyes to see. I have known a
vine whose head was aimlessly waving in the wind, with nothing near
it to which it might cling, turn deliberately round in an opposite
direction to that in which it had been growing and seize a line I had
stretched for it to grasp, without any help outside itself, and within
the space of an hour’s time. By manifold ways they cling and climb,
many by winding their stems round and round strings or sticks or wires,
or whatever is given them, as do the Morning-glories, Hop, Honeysuckle,
Wistarias, and many others; but Sweet Peas, Cobcœa, and so forth,
put out a delicate tendril at the end of each leaf, or rather group
of leaves. Nasturtiums, Clematis, and others take a turn with their
leaf-stems round anything that comes in their way, and so lift and hold
themselves securely, and the Echinocystus or Wild Cucumber has a system
of tendrils strong as iron and elastic as India-rubber. It is most
interesting to observe them all and ponder on their different charming
ways and habits, to help them if they need it, and to sympathize with
all their experiences. As I work among my flowers, I find myself
talking to them, reasoning and remonstrating with them, and adoring
them as if they were human beings. Much laughter I provoke among my
friends by so doing, but that is of no consequence. We are on such good
terms, my flowers and I!
Altogether lovely they are out of doors, but I plant and tend them
always with the thought of the joy they will be within the house also.
I know well what Emerson means when he asks,
“Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
Loved the wood Rose and left it on its stalk?”
and if I gather this or any other wild-flower I do it with such
reverent love that even he would be satisfied. No one knows better
and deplores more deeply than I the wholesale destruction, wanton and
cruel, which goes on among our wild-flowers every year; but to bring a
few indoors for purposes of study and fuller appreciation is another
and a desirable thing. For the wild Rose is but partially learned when
one pauses a moment in passing to admire the sweet surprise of its
beauty as it suddenly smiles up from the roadside. It cannot be learned
in a single glance, nor, indeed, in many glances: it must be carefully
considered and lovingly meditated upon before it yields all the marvel
of its delicate glory to your intelligence. “Consider the Lilies,”
said the Master. Truly, there is no more prayerful business than this
“consideration” of all the flowers that grow.