WILD FLOWERS BLUE AND PURPLE 



are symbolic of true love and constancy. A pretty 

 Persian legend, told by the poet Shiraz, runs as follows: 

 " It was in the golden morning of the early world, when 

 an angel sat weeping outside the closed gates of Eden. 

 He had fallen from his high estate through loving a 

 daughter of earth, nor was he permitted to enter again 

 until she whom he loved had planted the flowers of 

 the Forget-me-not in every corner of the world. 

 He returned to earth, and assisted her, and they went 

 hand in hand over the world, planting the Forget- 

 me-nots. When their task was ended they entered 

 Paradise together; for the fair woman, without tasting 

 the bitterness of death, became immortal like the angel, 

 whose love her beauty had won, when she sat by the 

 river twining the Forget-me-nots in her hair." 



This species is a native of Europe and Asia, and 

 is the true flower of our gardens, which has escaped, 

 and is found in marshes and along brooks or 

 in moist meadows from May to August. It is 

 a low-branching perennial, having slender root- 

 stocks or stolens. The slender, leafy stems grow 

 from six to eighteen inches in length, and often take 

 root again at the lower leaf joints. The oblong, lance- 

 shaped, and hairy leaf has a blunt tip and partly clasps 

 the stalk. The small spreading, five-lobed, yellow- 

 centred, light blue, or sometimes pink, flowers are 

 borne in small, one-sided, curving terminal clusters. 

 The buds are tinted with pink. The Forget-me-not 

 is spreading rapidly from Nova Scotia to New York, 

 and Pennsylvania southward and westward. The 



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