Twentieth Annual Meeting. 21 



a question-mark.) which it would not be likely to be with such a root. To make 

 sure, I repeatedly spent my camping-time digging with such tools as I had, but sev- 

 eral inches down failed to show any enlargement of the root, which was about the size 

 of the stalk so far as I could go. At last some fellow-pilgrim left a spade in our 

 way, and my brother attacked a very small plant and dug down perhaps six inches, 

 and then it spread out like a jug with a long neck, and the whole root of that small 

 plant was longer than a pail and nearly as large around in the center, of an irregu- 

 lar shape some like an immense yam. So my big-root theory was proved and the 

 secret of its vigor revealed. That plant is ornamental, and will stand drouth, too. 



For a long time I believed the common yarrow to be introduced, as the country 

 had been settled at least ten years before I saw it, but my belief in that is shaken, 

 as I never sent for flowers by friends, when they went to an unknown region, but they 

 inevitably brought yarrow. I have had it sent from Texas, Utah, Pike's Peak and 

 Long's Peak, Colorado, and at last from the Alps and Germany; so its nativity is 

 very uncertain. 



It is certain that vegetation near the Nebraska line was different when it was first 

 settled from the central or southern part of the State, from what it is now, as 

 many plants were very common that in some of the published lists were marked 

 rare. It was my privilege to explore in the northern tier of counties before the In- 

 dians had left, and not long after the white men began to settle in Coronado's "land 

 of crooked-backed oxen, mighty plains, and sandy heaths, smooth and wearisome, 

 and where, too, the earth is strong and black, where were found prunes like those of 

 Spain, excellent grapes, mulberries, and delightful flowers;" but no Botany was there 

 except Mrs. Phelps's, based on the old system, and my knowledge of botany was very 

 limited, and for ten years no other person was there at all interested in the study. 

 However, it did not require technical knowledge to remember what flowers came first, 

 what soil they grew on, or to mourn over the disappearance of some of the most rare, 

 or to exult over the abundance and beauty everywhere displayed. 



What landscape gardener, even in these days of massing color, dares dream of 

 miles of phlox (Carolina), so nearly solid as to seem a mass of rose-pink? Yet the 

 wide bottoms of the Nemaha presented just that view. With all the rage for yellow, 

 has anyone imagined acres of rocky bluffs covered with the stately pentsteman 

 (Digitalis), that one hour before sunset gave no hint of the coming glory, then al- 

 most at once burst out a solid mass of the gorgeous enothera [Missou^'iensis), every 

 tint from the most delicate buff to an orange red, each bloom several inches across, 

 and silky as a begonia? Go a little farther up to the prairie and you find different 

 varieties of enothera — a long list, some white, some pink, some prostrate, and some 

 four feet high. 



Who can tell of the beauty in the fringe of timber when the wild crab, with its 

 blush of pink, the plum with its mass of fragrant white, the grape with its tinted 

 tassels of mignonette perfume, the weird red-bud {Cercis Canadensis), with its naked 

 boughs hung with drops of bright crimson, when these displayed their banners over 

 a carpet of violets, blue, white and yellow, growing beside the delicate corydalis 

 {Au7'ea) and dicentra {CucuUaria), with here and there a stalk of early larkspur, 

 or [Del. Azuratum) a mat of strangely mottled leaves bearing the lily-like erythron- 

 ium, or the purple phlox (Pilosa) ? No crazy-quilt or ribbon-bed in Shaw's garden 

 was ever more brilliant than our autumn display of composite, asters, etc., daisies 

 of all sizes and colors mingled with the stately liatris or royal purple of the iron- 

 weed [Vernonia fascieulata), with the electric blue of the salvia {Agurea), and the 

 sunshine of the ever-present golden rod (Solidago). 



As for sunflowers, our State was rightly named, for wherever the sod was broken 

 by the wheel of the heavy freight wagons on the old California trail, there grew the 



