238 State Horticultural Society. 



What have our cultivated gardens to show us more beautiful 

 in golden tint than the California poppy? All along the tide- 

 washed shores of San Diego bay the mesas are brilliant with these 

 royal flowers ; even in February a veritable cloth of gold seems to 

 be spread over the upland. The brilliant Poinsetta, or Maximil- 

 lian's Sunflower, named for Mr. Poinsett, who was minister to 

 Mexico in 1828, grows wild in some parts of New Mexico and Cal- 

 ifornia. 



Far up where the towering mountains of Colorado divide, 

 above the timber line, lifting fair faces out of the snow, grows 

 the lavendar tinted Columbine. 



Among the bleak New England hills shines superbly, from 

 August to November, the glowing magenta fireweed, whose tall 

 beautiful spires of delicate blossoms decorate and cheer the waste 

 places along the rugged, fire-blackened forest land. 



On the Texas prairies the fine foliage and star-like blooms 

 of the cosmos are so common that the native Texan wonders why 

 the flower can be so much esteemed in other states, where it is care- 

 fully cultivated. 



The garden of the Master is everywhere; His flowers may be 

 had for the taking, wherever there is soil for a seed to find place. 



"Nature," says Dr. Holmes, "always has her pockets full of 

 seeds, and holes in all her pockets." Seeds migrate and emigrate. 

 Helped by wind and wave, by beast, bird and bee they make long 

 journeys and people all the waste places; no bit of fertile ground 

 remains long untenanted, seeds plant themselves almost by in- 

 stinct, and seem not only to live, but to plan. Said a recent writer 

 on this theme : "A farmer moves from Missouri to a remote district 

 in some western state ; there may not be a farm within miles of the 

 new location, and yet, in a year or two, the common garden purs- 

 lane, plantain, careless-weed and other pests of agriculture will ap- 

 pear in his field." 



In like manner do the seeds of the wild flowers travel, and 

 in this mysterious way is the garden of the great Master filled with 

 beauty and fragrance. In March and April we have the trailing 

 arbutus, the many manifestations of the violet family, spring beau- 

 ties, bluets, anemones, dandelions, saxifrage, wake-robin, forget- 

 me-nots, star flowers, bellwort, spring everlasting," the trilliums, 

 bishop's cap, foam flowers, blood root, wild tulips and many others 

 of like beauty. 



In April and May we find clintonias, miterwort, baneberry, 

 wild pansies, honeysuckles, Solomon's seal, Jack-in-the-pulpit, 

 pitcher plant and others well worth our attention. 



