60 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



I suppose we have no family of plants that make them- 

 selves at home in a new country more readily than do the cru- 

 cifers. Brassia juncea was collected near Fremont, Nebraska, 

 in 1015, and I found Erysimum repandum in my front yard 

 at Long Pine nineteen years ago, long before it was put into 

 our botanies. Sisymbrium altissimum I found in a vacant 

 lot in 1900. These species and many others have all the 

 qualifications of weeds but are just as interesting for study as 

 the more beautiful plants. 



OUR NATIONAL COLORS IN FLOWERS 



By Bessie L. Putnam. 



"\"\ 7"HILE nature is lavish with her colors, sometimes com- 

 " bining a great variety in certain species, it is very 



evident that her palette would never have satisfied Betsy Ross 

 when making her first star spangled banner. We find red and 

 white frequently in combination, and almost always wdiere 

 there is a blue flower there is its counterpart in white ; but when 

 we look for the three-fold combination that is another matter. 

 True there are often blue and pink as in hepatica, and garden 

 larkspur; and nature has most beautifully blended them in one, 

 in the opening buds of Mcrtcnsia Virginica. Yet the pure 

 national combination is strangely lacking. 



There may be a few instances in which the manipulations 

 of the skilled florist offer the variations for growing a floral 

 Hag, but even these are a very few and require a little allow- 

 ance for modifications in colors. The only approach of which 

 the writer is aware in nature is that of the lobelias, /.. carduialis, 

 L. syphilitica and the somewhat rare form of the latter which 

 is pure white. The intense scarlet of the first can scarcely be 

 equalled by any other flower. While the hue of the second 

 varies somewhat, it is frequently of a blue quite deep enough to 



