BOTANICAk 

 OAKDBN 



The American Botanist 



VOL. XXVII NOVEMBER, 1921 No. 4 



In purple, and gray-wrought lichen 

 The boulders lie in the sun; 

 Along the grassy footpath. 

 The white-tailed rabbits run. 

 The crickets work <^^d chirrup 

 Through the still afternoon; 

 And the owl calls at twilight 

 Under the frosfy moon. 



— Bliss Carmen 



OLD GARDEN FLOWERS 



Th:^ Columbines 



nphe gardening novice often fancies that the plants he culti- 

 ■*■ vates are in certain specific ways different from the so called 

 "wildflowers." It is of course true that garden flowers are in 

 many cases greatly changed from the representatives of their 

 race afield, but all good gardeners know that our garden flow- 

 ers, or at least their progenitors, all grow wild somewhere. 

 These undomesticated specimens frequently offer merely a 

 basis upon which to build beauty ; they become attractive only 

 when the gardener has improved them. Single flowers of no 

 particular grace of outline are all the better for doubling and 

 small flowers are enhanced in value by an increase in size, but 

 there are other flowers that need no aid from the cultivator. 

 They are born with a beauty that is difficult to inprove upon. 

 An increase in size, a change in color, or a greater profusion 

 of flowers is all that the gardener can hope to accomplish. 

 Theirs in a beauty of form and line that doubling only mars. 

 It is to this latter group that the columbines belong. 



