SCARLET GERANIUMS. 147 



does well enough with the old hardy perennials and 

 annuals, the mints and marjoram, the daffodils and vio- 

 lets, the lilies and oxlips of our English poetry ; it will 

 not away with your modern gloxinias and echeverias, and 

 heaven only knows what other new-fangled things, called 

 by doubtfully classical names unlovelier than themselves. 



Among all our old-fashioned garden flowers, not one 

 is brighter or prettier than these common pelargoniums 

 from the Cape which we all know familiarly as scarlet 

 geraniums. They are not exactly of the genuine botani- 

 cal geranium type, it is true ; but they are quite near 

 enough to it for even unlearned eyes to perceive imme- 

 diately the close relationship between them. I suppose 

 everybody knows the little wild herb-robert of our Eng- 

 lish roadsides its pretty lace-like foliage turns so bright 

 a red on dry walls or sandy hedge-banks, that even the 

 most casual passer-by can hardly fail to have learned 

 its name. Herb-robert is the true geranium ; and it has 

 many familiar allies in Britain and in the rest of Europe, 

 including that large and brilliant kind the blood gera- 

 nium which stars the limestone rocks of the Mediterra- 

 nean and the Atlantic shores, from Sorrento and Cadiz 

 to our -own Cornish, "Welsh, and Cumbrian cliffs. 



The ordinary scarlet garden pelargonium is descended 

 . from a very similar type ; and yet though it is so com- 

 mon and so well known a plant, it has some strange 

 peculiarities of structure which escape the notice of 

 ninety-nine out of a hundred among those who have seen 

 it familiarly in their gardens or their vases from child- 

 hood upward. Pick a truss of the bright red blossoms 

 from the plant we have no despotic gardener here to 

 frown at us for meddling with our own belongings and 

 then nip off a single flower from the head, close to the 

 point where the clustered bundle joins tha main stem. 



