Magenta to Pink 



Stately ranks of these magnificent flowers, growing among 

 the tall sedges and " cat-tails" of the marshes, make the most in- 

 sensate traveller exclaim at their amazing loveliness. To reach 

 them one must don rubber boots and risk sudden seats in the 

 slippery ooze ; nevertheless, with spade in hand to give one sup- 

 port, it is well worth while to seek them out and dig up some 

 roots to transplant to the garden. Here, strange to say, without 

 salt soil or more water than the average garden receives from 

 showers and hose, this handsomest of our wild flowers soon 

 makes itself delightfully at home under cultivation. Such good, 

 deep earth, well enriched and moistened, as the hollyhock thrives 

 in, suits it perfectly. Now we have a better opportunity to note 

 how the bees suck the five nectaries at the base of the petals and 

 collect the abundant pollen of the newly opened flowers, which 

 they perforce transfer to the five button-shaped stigmas intention- 

 ally impeding the entrance to older blossoms. Only its cousin 

 the hollyhock, a native of China, can vie with the rose-mallow's 

 decorative splendor among the shrubbery; and the Rose of China 

 {Hibiscus Rosa-Sinensis), cultivated in greenhouses here, eclipse 

 it in the beauty of the individual blossom. This latter flower, 

 whose superb scarlet corolla stains black, is employed by the 

 Chinese married women, it is said, to discolor their teeth ; but in 

 the West Indies it sinks to even greater ignominy as a dauber for 

 blacking shoes ! 



Marsh Mallow {Althaea officinalis), a name frequently mis- 

 applied to the swamp rose-mallow, is properly given to a much 

 smaller pink flower, measuring only an inch and a half across at 

 the most, and a far rarer one, being a naturalized immigrant from 

 Europe found only in the salt marshes from the Massachusetts 

 coast to New York. It is also known as Wymote. This is a 

 bushy, leafy plant, two to four feet high, and covered with velvety 

 down as a protection against the clogging of its pores by the 

 moisture arising from its wet retreats. Plants that live in swamps 

 must "perspire" freely and keep their pores open. From the 

 marsh mallow's thick roots the mucilage used in confectionery is 

 obtained, a soothing demulcent long esteemed in medicine. An- 

 other relative, the okra or gumbo plant of vegetable gardens 

 {Hibiscus esculentus), has mucilage enough in its narrow pods 

 to thicken a potful of soup. Its pale yellow, crimson-centred 

 flowers are quite as beautiful as any hollyhock, but not nearly so 

 conspicuous, because of the plant's bushy habit of growth. In 

 spite of its name, the Althaea of our gardens, or Rose of Sharon 

 {Hibiscus Syriacus), is not so closely allied to Althaea officinalis 

 as to the swamp rose-mallow. 



Another immigrant from Europe and Asia sparingly natural- 

 ized in waste places and roadsides in Canada, the United States, 



8 113 



