PERSONALITY OF PLANTS 
middle age, but for our young prince we want 
flowers of the spring that may become his 
time of day.” 
Sometimes, through sentimental attachment, 
whole peoples elect certain flowers to represent 
them before the world. Thus the United States 
has chosen the Goldenrod for its national floral 
emblem, while the Rose of England, the Thistle 
of Scotland, the Shamrock of Ireland, and the 
Leek of Wales act in the same capacity for the 
British Isles. 
Man paid a high compliment to the mystic 
veneration in which he holds the plant world 
when he, in his primitive beliefs, invariably 
conceived of heaven as some terrestrial paradise 
of luxurious vegetation. The Persians had their 
Mount Caucasus; the Arabians dreamed about 
an Elysium in the Desert of Arden; the Greeks 
and Romans had bright mental pictures of the 
Gardens of Hesperides; and the Celts hoped 
to spend their postmortem existence on an en- 
chanted isle of wondrous beauty. 
Such beliefs have fallen into disuse, but man 
is still a long way off from a solution of the 
various mystic phenomena of the plant world. 
[184] 
