EDITORIAL 



The denizens of our gardens are ordinarily regarded as 

 exotics. We make war on the golden-rod, toad-flax, rud- 

 beckia, daisy, and the like, because they are familiar to us in 

 the wild state, and we cultivate many plants more lacking in 

 beauty, simply because they are rare. The writer knows of 

 one instance in which the purchaser of a well-planted garden 

 pulled up all the wild phlox and columbines growing therein 

 and planted castor beans in their stead, because the uprooted 

 plants "used to grow in our woods." Many another admirer 

 of a beautiful garden flower loses interest in it when he dis- 

 covers that it grows wild in the locality, and yet the cultivated 

 flowers do not form a distinct group and did not originate 

 in any particular region. They are drawn from all parts of 

 the world. One's own locality will be found to have yielded 

 its full share to the collection. A contributor from Texas 

 reports that twenty-five different species of plants from her 

 part of the world are offered in the catalogue of a well- 

 known nurseryman, and in the region where this note is 

 written, there are no less than fifty-two perennial species, 

 exclusive of shrubs and trees, which are named in the same 

 catalogue. As a matter of fact, the showy wild flowers of any 

 region are usually regarded as desirable garden flowers in 

 places where they do not grow naturally. The ox-eve daisy, 

 which in Xew York and New England is considered a 

 pestiferous weed and referred to as white-weed, is, in parts 

 of Illinois, known as the marguerite and is given an honored 



