THE FLOWER AND THE BEE 



profuse blossoming, of every hue from deep rose to white. 

 Almost equally conspicuous in various parts of the country 

 are large areas brightly colored with yellow buttercups, golden- 

 rods, sunflowers, orange hawkweeds, purple thistles, and blue 

 lupines. In Texas the State flower, the blue lupine, carpets 

 the ground for miles with innumerable blue flowers. But 

 nothing in this world can surpass in beauty or lavish abun- 

 dance the cloud-like masses of bloom displayed by the great 

 northern apple-orchards. 



"England has her furze-clad commons," says Wallace, "her 

 glades of wild hyacinths, her heathery mountainsides, her 

 fields of poppies, her meadows of buttercups and orchises — 

 carpets of yellow, purple, azure-blue, and fiery crimson, which 

 the tropics rarely can exhibit. We have smaller masses of 

 color in our hawthorn and crab-trees, our holly and moun- 

 tain-ash, our broom, foxgloves, primroses, and purple vetches, 

 which clothe with gay colors the whole length and breadth of 

 our land. They are characteristic of the country and climate, 

 they have not to be sought, for they gladden the eye at every 

 step." 



Brilliantly colored flowers usually contrast with the green 

 foliage of trees, or of herbaceous plants, or with the grass. 

 But the white and blue hepaticas, which bloom with the open- 

 ing of the new season, have for a background the sere and 

 brown leaves, fallen from the trees during the preceding 

 autumn; and contrasting with the dark soil in dense woods 

 gleams the snow-white Indian-pipe. (Fig. 100.) Flowers 

 which rest upon the surface of the water are often white or 

 yellow, as the yellow and white water-lilies. Nocturnal 

 flowers are also generally white or yellow, since purple or blue 

 would be invisible in the darkness of night. 



In Europe and North America, and in all lands where there 



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