104 THE PLANT WOELD 



In the case of annuals, flowers enough to furnish plenty of seeds 

 for next year must be allowed to remain on the plants. 



Flowers with long stalks, like water lilies and violets, which can be 

 picked without injuring other portions of the plant, can usually be 

 gathered freely with little danger of injury to the plants as a whole. It 

 is well known to floriculturists that flower production is much less ex- 

 hausting to the plant than the production of seeds, and that to get the 

 greatest yield of flowers the blooms must be picked as they open. This 

 principle will apply to wild flowers as well as to those under cultivation. 



Experience, moreover, bears out this belief, for violets are gathered 

 as freely as any of our wild flowers, yet they seem to thrive and increase 

 even in the places where they are likely to be gathered most. This may 

 be due in part to the cleistogamous flowers which never appear above 

 ground. But neither does the water lily seem to be suffering, although 

 marketed freely. As before stated, local Usts of similar flowers could 

 be easily made up by any competent local botanist. 



Flowers can be gathered in moderation from flowering shrubs and 

 trees vvdthout material injury to the plants if little of the wood and leaf- 

 bearing shoot be removed and care be taken to select flowers from dift'er- 

 ent portions of the plant. For instance, it is a decided advantage to 

 apple trees to have some of the flowers removed in seasons of very full 

 bloom. But is is far from an advantage to have whole branches torn off 

 bodily and all the lower flowers entirely removed, as is so often done 

 with the apple trees and with the dogwoods in the vicinity of New York 

 City. There are flowering dogwoods enough in its vicinity to give pretty 

 nearly all comers a moderate cluster if properly gathered, but at the 

 present rate and methods of collecting there will soon be none for any 

 one. The locusts, sweet pepperbush and the various species of viburnum 

 belong in a similar class. 



Many of our most interesting wild flowers, especially those of early 

 spring, arise from a thickened underground portion, rich in stored nutri- 

 ment, and while in many cases the flowers cannot be collected without 

 taking the leaves also, the underground portion (rootstock, tuber, bulb, 

 corm, etc.) will easily supply the loss, if not too frequent or severe. 

 Such flowers, for example, as the spring beauty, Jack-in-the-pulpit, 

 bellworts and anemones, can be gathei ed in moderation in the more 

 secluded portions of the city environs. In these cases special care should 

 be taken to avoid injury to the underground portion, although in many 

 cases nature herself has looked out for this by burying this portion of 

 the plant deeply in the soil. If any one doubts this, let him try to dig 

 a few corms of the adder-tongue lily {Erythronium). 



Then there is a class of flowers ordinarily classed as weeds, yet 

 beautiful withal, and so sturdy and diflicult of destruction that they can 



