PERSONALITY OF PLANTS 
Everything in plantdom has its own peculiar 
style of structure and beauty. All are worthy 
of imitation and reproduction, provided only 
it is done in the right place and the right way. 
It must be remembered that, in origin, orna- 
ment was first symbolic and then decorative. 
Real ornament is never unduly prominent but 
subordinates itself to the idea and structure of 
the whole. 
Man has imitated the plants also in things of 
a lowlier nature. Cups, vases, pitchers and 
other utensils were undoubtedly first suggested 
by similar shapes in plantdom. It is not too 
fantastic to imagine that the smoking pipe is 
modelled after the flower known as the Dutch- 
man’s Pipe. An electric wire running down 
the chain of a suspended lighting fixture looks 
all the world like a climbing vine. Human 
jewelry has its prototype among the flowers. 
Our garden beauties powdered their faces long 
before their human sisters ever thought of that 
method of self-adornment. It is said that 
Greek dancers and athletes sometimes exer- 
cised before certain slender plants in order to 
pattern their bodies after them. 
[106] 
