PUBLIC PARKS OF IOWA 225 



the delectation of the dwellers in the temperate zones. It was in tem- 

 perate England that Wordsworth saw his host of dancing daffodils, and 

 Burns his daisy. And that portion of Japan where landscape art has its 

 apotheosis is warm temperate, not subtropical!. 



Our whole Atlantic seashore is gilded in autumn with the massive heads 

 of the evergreen goldenrod (Solidago sempervdrens) right out to the up- 

 per reaches of the waves in storm. The salt marshes are decked all sum- 

 mer with pink and white hibiscuses and starry sabbatias. The meadows of 

 eastern Pennsylvania, New York, and New England are brilliant with 

 dandelions in May, while the barren hillsides are carpeted with acres of 

 mountain pink. Then comes the golden covering of buttercups, then 

 the gold and silver daisies, and in summer the lace-like flea-banes and wild 

 carrots. And when autumn spreads her loom over the landscape, her 

 tapestry marks out the rivers with miles of yellow cereopsis, the old fields 

 with a wealth of goldenrods and asters, joe-pye weed, and sumach ber- 

 ries, and the creeks and hills crimson and gold maples and hickories, 

 oaks and tulip trees. 



Not less wonderful, but more so, is the course of Flora's seasonal dis- 

 play in Iowa. Very coy that goddess is with us in spring. She blushes 

 faintly with the soft maples, and then retreats while brusque Jack-frost 

 puts on another scene or two. But suddenly in May she doffs her modesty, 

 and sihows herself in all her graceful curves and living color. 



Nowhere, I ween, is greater floral beauty displayed than on the hills 

 and prairies of Iowa, unless it be perhaps in the short growing season of 

 the alpine meadow, where spring and summer and autumn are crowded 

 into a period of six or eight weeks. Have you stood on an eminence 

 overlooking a river valley in mid-May, when the oak leaves are as big as 

 squirrel ears? There is color and texture and mass and extent that de- 

 mand the pen of a Ruskin or the brush of a Turner. Below you on the 

 river bottom are whole acres of dog-tooth violets, spring beauties and 

 bluebells. Back on the slopes the wild crab is dotting or covering the 

 banks with its glow of pink, and exhaling its most exquisite odors on the 

 breeze, and offering food and home to every busy bee or loafing drone. 

 Does anyone believe that the cherry trees of Japan are more lovely? Im- 

 possible. I have seen a solitary tree of Pyrus coronarius on a Pennsyl- 

 vania hillside, and a glorious thing it is, both to sight and scent. But 

 Pyrus ioensis is its equal, and the meanest draw may be adorned witb 

 dozens of them. Then while the first pink petals are fluttering from the 

 failing crab blossoms, the wild hawthorns spread great sheets and balls 

 of snowy bloom, while all beneath, the lavender phlox displays its num 

 berless tufts of airy blossoms. 



The traveler on the railroad sees no more dazzling sight along the 

 right-of-way than the miles ot gaillardia, oenothera, and callirhoe in east- 

 ern Kansas, the grindelias and sunflowers of Nebraska, the gorgeous 

 spiderworts, pink, blue or white, the big anemones, and the pink phloxes 

 of Iowa. And then in late summer we have that wonderful burst of gold 

 along the railways and roadsides and rivers which once made these vast 

 prairies a marvel of brightness. Our coreopsis, helianthus species, 

 heleniums, rudlbeckias, lepachys, heliopsis and liatris, our massive golden 

 rods and misty asters are typical of the lavish health and vigor, freedom, 



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