286 POPULAR GARDEN FLOWERS 



flower-lovers to know that they are as modern as 

 florists' Chrysanthemums. 



The facts being thus, it is useless to send our 

 thoughts rambling among the book-shelves in search 

 of references to Phloxes by the old writers. When the 

 giants of the Elizabethan epoch were sharpening their 

 quills, the Phloxes grew only as weeds in the untrodden 

 wilds of North America. We must think out our own 

 poetry about them, as we survey them in our borders 

 on fiery August days, and in the cooler hours of 

 September. They stand in bold masses, the tall, strong, 

 woody stems, clothed with short, narrow leaves, bear- 

 ing huge clusters of brilliant flowers aloft. When good 

 culture and good varieties are in union the flower-heads 

 may be a foot long and eight or nine inches through, 

 the individual flowers as large as florins. Here, surely, 

 is the wherewithal to inspire poetry, if rather of the 

 martial than the amorous stamp. 



The botanist does not speak of "clusters" and 

 w flower-heads " in connection with Phloxes. These are 

 loose garden phrases, fit only for the man in the street. 

 He calls them "panicles." A panicle is an inflores- 

 cence, the branches of which are divided irregularly, 

 as in the Lilac. And we bow to the superior knowledge 

 of the botanist, and we feel what fundamentally inferior 

 creatures we are, when we turn up a plant dictionary 

 and find that the parent (or one of the parents at least) 

 of our late blooming Phloxes is Phlox paniculata, a North 

 American plant, with purplish pink flowers, that was 

 introduced in 1782. Another species which is credited 

 with the parentage of the late Phloxes is maculata, 

 introduced from North America in 1740, and having 

 purple flowers. Phlox maculata has another name 

 decussata and this explains why it is that the reader 



