From Blue to Purple 



interesting feature, that, nevertheless, seems to many a foolish du- 

 plication of energy on Nature's part. Why should the same plant 

 bear two kinds of blossoms and seeds ? Among the foliage of low 

 shrubbery and plants in shady lanes and woodside thickets, we 

 see the delicate, drooping clusters of lilac blossoms hanging where 

 bees can readily discover them and, in pilfering their sweets, trans- 

 fer their pollen from flower to flower. But in case of failure to 

 intercross these blossoms that are dependent upon insect help to 

 set fertile seed, what then ? Must the plant run the risk of ex- 

 tinction ? Self-fertilization may be an evil, but failure to produce 

 seed at all is surely the greatest one. To guard against such a 

 calamity, insignificant looking flowers that have no petals to open 

 for the enticing of insects, but which fertilize themselves with their 

 own pollen, produce abundant seed close to the ground or under 

 it. Then what need of the showy blossoms hanging in the thicket 

 above ? Close inbreeding in the vegetable world, as in the animal, 

 ultimately produces degenerate offspring ; and although the showy 

 lilac blossoms of the wild peanut yield comparatively few cross- 

 fertilized seeds, these are quite sufficient to enable the vine to 

 maintain those desired features which are the inheritance from an- 

 cestors that struggled in their day and generation after perfection. 

 No plant dares depend upon its cleistogamous or blind flowers 

 alone for offspring; and in the sixty or more genera containing 

 these curious growths, that usually look like buds arrested in de- 

 velopment, every plant that bears them bears also showy flowers 

 dependent upon cross-pollination by insect aid. 

 The boy who 



" Drives home the cows from the pasture 

 Up through the long shady lane " 



knows how reluctantly they leave the feast afforded by the wild 

 peanut. Hogs, rooting about in the moist soil where it grows, 

 unearth the hairy pods that should produce next year's vines; 

 hence the poor excuse for branding a charming plant with a 

 repellent folk-name. 



Violets 



{FJola) Violet family 



Lacking perfume only to be a perfectly satisfying flower, 

 the Common, Purple, Meadow, or Hooded Blue Violet (K. obli- jf>. i(d 

 qua) — the V. ciiciillata of Gray — has nevertheless established it- 

 self in the hearts of the people from the Arctic to the Gulf as no 

 sweet-scented, showy, hothouse exotic has ever done. Royal 

 in color as in lavish profusion, it blossoms everywhere — in woods, 

 waysides, meadows, and marshes, but always in finer form in 

 cool, shady dells; with longer flowering scapes in meadow bogs; 



28 



