PUBLIC PARKS OF IOWA 223 



particular haunts and will not thrive elsewhere. Many of these, from 

 'ruthless plucking are becoming rare, and in some cases, extinct in their 

 localities. I was one of a small group that went out to gather trailing 

 arbutus that sweetest harbinger oif early spring. It was in western Wis- 

 consin, more than 30 years ago. Pushing aside the snow, we picked every 

 flower we saw mo, we didn't pick the flowers, we pulled them up, root and 

 all and came home with baskets filled. We called it a glorious day. It 

 does not look so glorious now. In those Wisconsin woods, where once 

 the arbutus was abundant there is 'scarcely a blossom to be found. Con- 

 servation had not sounded its note of warning. 



Iowa has rather a wide range of flora. The wooded section along the 

 Mississippi river has the characteristics of flora of the eastern states. On 

 the bluffs about Sioux City, the beautiful, showy manzalia is found. This 

 is, so far as I know, the extreme limit of this flower. The East and West 

 seem to clasp hands over Iowa. Because of this very fact, many of our 

 species do not grow in abundance and will need the more care to pre- 

 serve them. 



The purple-blue hepatica is one of our delicate flowers threatened with 

 extinction, The same is true of the trembling anemone. I have seen 

 nothing more beautiful in the vicinity of Sioux City than a patch more 

 than 100 feet square of snowy ploodroot. Year after year we go out to 

 let this wonderful garden say to us what it will. Rarely does anyone pick 

 a flower. Such delicate purity and beauty speaks to the heart as not even 

 the poet can, Abundant as the bloodroot is, there are localities where its 

 life Us threatened. There are places about Sioux City wihere bloodroot, 

 diacentra, columbine, and jack-in-the^-pulpit were abundant twenty-live 

 yeans ago and today there is scarcely a trace of them to (be found. This 

 due to thoughtless, wanton plucking. Children pick all they can carry. 

 In a few hours they are withered and thrown out. Would the loss from 

 our roadsides and hills, of the purple and white aster, the bearded tongue, 

 the butterfly weed, the fringed and closed gentians, not rob us of a lan- 

 guage that speaks without words or sounds, to the heart and mind? 

 Flowers express what lies too deep in life for expression. In Japan the 

 lotus flower is seen on every temple altar. Made of gold or silver paper, 

 it is carried in every funeral procession, a symbol of the immortality of 

 the soul. 



Botany pupils are learning to know flowers in their own haunts without 

 uprooting them for herbariums. Many flowers that grow in abundance are 

 not at all injured by moderate picking, but too often we pull up the whole 

 clump and do not stop so long as there is a flower in sight. The hepatica, 

 diacentra, spring beauty, and bloodroot growing in moist woodlands and 

 hillsides are easily uprooted. They are among our vanishing flowers and 

 should not be disturbed. The same is true of the American columbine. 

 It has to scatter many seed to insure propagation. The jack-in-the-pulpit 

 is a northern representative of a large family of tropical plants. Two 

 years ago a class of school children, under the guidance of teachers up- 

 rooted 410 jack-in-the-pulpits in New York botanical gardens in a small 

 area. They were taken and replanted. It is necessary that our teachers 

 be warned and trained against unnecessary destruction. Ruthless pick- 

 ing of almost any species will in the end prove disastrous. 



