BLUE AND PURPLE 



five cleft. Corolla. — Closed at the mouth; large; oblong. Stamens. — 

 Four or five. Pistil. — One, with two stigmas. 



Few flowers adapt themselves better to the season than the 

 closed gentian. We look for it in September when the early 

 waning days and frost-suggestive nights prove so discouraging to 

 the greater part of the floral world. Then in somewhat moist, 

 shaded places along the roadside we find this vigorous, autumnal- 

 looking plant, with stout stems, leaves that bronze as the days 

 advance, and deep-tinted flowers firmly closed as though to pro- 

 tect the delicate reproductive organs within from the sharp 

 touches of the late year. 



To me the closed gentian usually shows a deep blue or even 

 purple countenance, although, like the fringed gentian and so 

 many other flowers, its color is lighter in the shade than in the 

 sunlight. But Thoreau claims for it a '* transcendent blue," '* a 

 splendid blue, light in the shade, turning to purple with age." 

 ''Bluer than the bluest sky, they lurk in the moist and shady 

 recesses of the banks," he writes. Mr. Burroughs also finds it 

 ''intensely blue." 



FRINGED GENTIAN. 



Gentiana crinita. Gentian Family, 



Stem. — One to two feet high. Leaves. — Opposite, lance-shaped or nar- 

 rowly oval. Flowers. — Blue; large. Calyx. — Four-cleft; the lobes un- 

 equal. Corolla. — Funnel-form, with four fringed, spreading lobes. Sta- 

 tne7is. — Four. Pistil. — One, with two stigmas. 



In late September, when we have almost ceased to hope for 

 new flowers, we are in luck if we chance upon this 



whose 



" — blossom bright with autumn dew," 



" — sweet and quiet eye 



Looks through its fringes to the sky, 

 Blue — blue — as if that sky let fall, 

 A flower from its cerulean wall ; " 



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