36 • THE A:\rKRrCAN BOTAXrST. 



told of some one who had zeal, not according to knowl- 

 edge, who made a rope of crow-foot violets to decorate a 

 pulpit, using of these delicate and |3erfect creatures 

 hundreds of single blossoms! It was a slaughter of the 

 innocents; and, furthermore, it was entirely ineffective as 

 £t decoration. This effort to jjrotect our native \vild- 

 ilowers may well begin in the church, taking as- the text 

 that we are to "consider the lily," — not in large and 

 meaningless bunches, not in the passing beauty of its vio- 

 lent death through careless human hands, but we are to 

 consider the lily of the fields, how it grows ! — Margaret 

 Delancl in Leaflet of Society for the Protection of Native 

 Plants. 



Exterminating Wild Mtstard. — Those who have 

 passed along the countryside in Ma\' or June must have 

 often been impressed with the great cjuantities of wild 

 mustard in cultivated fields. Hitherto it has seemed im- 

 possible to root it out of grain fields but some recent 

 experiments have shown that if spra3^ed when about to 

 rjloom with a solution of copper sulphate and water, it 

 dies at once while all cereal crops are unharmed by the 

 solution. 



Red Flowers. — As to rare colors among flowers, 

 mentioned in a recent number of your magazine possibh' 

 "bee-balm" means the Monarda didyma among the 

 scarlets. As I have known it ahva^'s as monarda or 

 horse-mint, I thought I detected an important omission. 

 But the "painted cup" in most of the cases when I have 

 met it has seemed to my eye to belong among the orange- 

 reds. Another scarlet, of which lam uncertain just now 

 as to the botanical name, is known among the mountains 

 about Asheville, X. C, as the "Indian pink," It grows 

 one to two feet high with stick}- stem and foliage; the 

 flower of a star shape resembling in size and general 

 appearance the cypress vine flower of our gardens. B\-the 

 way I noticed that Lobelia cardinalis as well as Monarda 

 didyma are being adopted as garden plants. — Elwyn 

 Waller. [The fire pink is probably Silene virginica. — Ed.] 



