INTRODUCTION. 
perforce to work. At least I hold a strong belief that the height 
of flower-time is, in reality, the safest moment to move all plants. 
This, of course, does not apply to specimens already established 
in the garden ; but is certainly a good and solid rule for all those 
that have to undertake a long journey, with, at its end, no demand 
for immediate display. For thus the plant is taken at the top 
of its crescendo of energy, and the reason for that crescendo is 
also cut off, so that the accumulated energy remains free to 
divert into another channel. With the first pulsations of the 
hills their plants, awakened to new life, begin passionately working 
up their force towards the maturing of their seed ; this, and not 
the bearing of flowers, being the real strain and apex of their 
existence, upon which all their efforts converge. If, then, they 
are taken up in full bloom, you are secure of their highest degree 
of activity; but the shock of removal, and the travail of the journey, 
cut off the hope (and stress) of subsequent seed ; so that the plant’s 
full vitality (hardly, if at all, diminished by the change) is switched 
off from the toil of pregnancy and is able to devote its undistracted 
attention to the work of making fresh roots and re-establishing 
itself. There is no other moment, indeed, at which the plant’s 
personality is at such high tension, and capable of such doughty 
deeds; there is no close time for collecting, yet the best of all 
possible moments is that in which the plant is at the full pitch 
of its force, with nothing now to do with that force except prepare 
fresh roots. Spring collecting loses the flowers ; autumn collecting 
often finds the seed already forming, and the plant’s vitality 
thereby diminished to an extent corresponding with the germ’s 
state of advancement in the pod. Furthermore, at this point 
it is at full flower-time the roots of the current season cease 
to rove, and the plant is at poise, awaiting the moment when, 
about the end of August, the new fibres fare forth, to anchor the 
tuft securely in the ground against the storms and ground-swell 
of the winter. Therefore it is that I not only believe, above all, 
in collecting the plant in flower, but also especially favour late 
August as a replanting time, that it may promptly take hold 
with its new roots of the warmed and comfortable soil. 
lvii 
