From Blue to Purple 



one who has passed the ruins of Hawthorne's little red cottage at 

 Lenox, for example, and seen the way his wife's clump of white 

 phlox under his study window has spread to cover an acre of 

 hillside, would suppose it to be luxuriating in its favorite locality. 

 This variety of the species (var. Candida) lacks the purplish tlecks 

 on stem and lower leaves responsible for the specific name of 

 the type. Pinkish purple or pink blossoms are borne in a rather 

 narrow, elongated panicle on the typical Sweet William. 



Most members of the phlox family resort to the trick of coat- 

 ing the upper stem and the peduncles immediately below the 

 flowers with a sticky secretion in which crawling insects, intent 

 on pilfering sweets, meet their death, just as birds are caught on 

 limed twigs. Butterflies, for whom phloxes have narrowed their 

 tubes to the exclusion of most other insects, are their benefactors; 

 but long-tongued bees and flies often seek their nectar. Indeed, 

 the number of strictly butterfly-flowers is surprisingly small. 



Virginia Cowslip ; Tree or Smooth Lungwort; 



Blue-bells 



{Merteiisia l^irginica) Borage family 



Flowers — Pinkish in bud, afterward purplish blue, folding to light 

 blue ; about i in. long, tubular, funnel form, the tube of 

 corolla not crested; spreading or hanging on slender pedicels 

 in showy, loose clusters at end of smooth stem from i to 2 ft. 

 high; stamens 5, inserted on corolla; i pistil; ovary of 4 

 divisions. Leaves : Large, entire, alternate, veiny, oblong or 

 obovate, the upper ones seated on stem ; lower very large 

 ones diminishing toward base into long petioles; at first rich, 

 dark purple, afterward pale bluish gray. Fruit : 4 seed-like 

 little nuts, leathery, wrinkled when mature. 



Preferred Habitat — Alluvial ground, low meadows, and along 

 streams. 



Flowering Season — March — May. 



Distribution — Southern Canada to South Carolina and Kansas, 

 west to Nebraska; most abundant in middle West. 



Not to be outdone by its cousins the heliotrope and the 

 forget-me-not, this lovely and f;ir more showy spring flower has 

 found its way into the rockwork and sheltered, moist nooks of 

 many gardens, especially in England, where Mr. W. Robinson, 

 who has appealed for its wider cultivation in that perennially 

 charming book, "The English Flower Garden," says of the 

 Mertensias : "There is something about them more beautiful in 

 form of foliage and stem, and in the graceful way in which they 

 rise to panicles of blue, than in almost any other family. . . . 



36 



