198 THE SHAKESPEARE GARDEN 



use of any of these in Physicke in these days that I 

 know, but are wholly spent for their flowers sake." 



A modern botanist remarks : 



"The gardener's ideal has been the full-flowered 

 spike with a goodly range of colors on the chord of 

 blue. We think of larkspur as blue. Some of these 

 blues are pale as the sky, some pure cobalt, others 

 indigo and still others are a strange broken blue, 

 gorgeous and intense, yet impure, glittering on the 

 surface as if it were strewn with broken glass, and 

 sometimes darkened into red. The center of a lark- 

 spur is often grotesque; the hairy petals suggest a 

 bee at the heart of a flower, and the flower itself 

 looks like a little creature poised for flight. In 

 structure the garden race has changed very little 

 from the primitive type, though that type has wan- 

 dered far from the simplicity of the buttercup, which 

 names the Ranunculaca. Whatever path of evolu- 

 tion the larkspur has trod, it is very clear that the 

 goal at which it has arrived is cross-fertilization by 

 means of the bee. At some time along the path the 

 calix took on the duties of the corolla, became highly 

 colored, developed a spur, while at the same time 

 the corolla lessened both in size and in importance. 

 The stamens mature before the pistil and are so 

 placed that the bee cannot get at the honey without 



