PUBLIC PARKS OF IOWA 229 



around each school, devoted to trees, shrubbery, and wild flowers? These 

 to be our estates and places of ease and culture and beauty. 



And so, in the end, I can see nothing for it but community enterprise 

 and public ownership. We must work for state and national wild flower 

 preserves, and for town and district parks and outing grounds, just as we 

 advocate public schools, libraries, and churches, and for the same reasons 

 Iowa Conservation, Vol. I, No. 1, pp. 8-10. 



IOWA'S NATIVE PLANT LIFE. 

 By Mrs. E. A. Burgess. 



The preservation of wild flowers and plants may seem unimportant to 

 those in whom an interest in nature has not been awakened, or whose 

 interest is limited to nature merely as the provider of practical human 

 wants. The same observation was true at first of the birds and trees, but 

 the public has now become thoroughly aroused to the necessity of their 

 preservation, if upon economic grounds only. The prospect of the ex- 

 termination of many of our choicest flowers ond plants is not apprehended 

 by the public generally, but every observer and lover of wild plant life 

 foresees this result unless individual and collective efforts shall be earn- 

 estly directed toward their conservation. 



To preserve trees as one ol the great natural resources of the country, 

 as well as for their great aesthetic value, national, state, and private 

 forestry organizations have been formed which have already developed an 

 active public opinion on this subject, and which have been instrumental in 

 securing the enactment of laws with respect to the cutting, destroying, 

 and planting of forest trees, and making it a misdemeanor, punishable by 

 fine or imprisonment, or both, to destroy trees under certain conditions. 

 Likewise, Audubon societies, organized for the protection of song and 

 game birds, have created a strong public sentiment against the wanton 

 killing of birds for their plumage or for sport. Much instructive literature 

 has been distributed by the national government covering bird and forest 

 preservation. According to a bulletin issued in the fall of 1912, ninety-five 

 national reservations for the protection of wild life had been established 

 by executive order during the preceding twelve years. There are, also, 

 a number of national tree preserves. But I do not find any data indi- 

 cating that the national government is doing any work or carrying on any 

 campaign against the extermination of the small plant life of the country. 

 I know of no government bulletin bearing directly on this subject. That 

 the general public -is still indifferent to the subject and does not realize 

 its importance, is indicated by the dearth of literature bearing on the 

 question. 



Are the familiar wild flowers and plants vanishing in any appreciable 

 degree, or is the prospect of their greater scarcity or extinction so im- 

 minent as to give occasion for alarm? An Iowa authority, Mr. Prank C. 

 Pellett, of Atlantic, gives it as his opinion that in twenty-five years many 

 of the "beautiful blooming things of nature" will become extinct unless 



