AMONG THE WILD-FLOWERS 13 



factory. This is not probable, as it is a Euro- 

 pean species, and I should sooner think it had 

 escaped from cultivation. If one were to act 

 upon the suggestions of Robinson's "Wild 

 Garden," already alluded to, he would gather 

 the seeds of these plants and sow them in the 

 marshes and along the sluggish inland streams, 

 till the banks of all our rivers were gay with 

 these brilliant exotics. 



Among our native plants, the one that takes 

 broad marshes to itself and presents vast sheets 

 of color is the marsh milkweed, far less bril- 

 liant than the loosestrife or the mallow ; still a 

 missionary in the wilderness, lighting up many 

 waste places with its humbler tints of purple. 



One sometimes seems to discover a familiar 

 wild-flower anew by coming upon it in some 

 peculiar and striking situation. Our columbine 

 is at all times and in all places one of the most 

 exquisitely beautiful of flowers; yet one spring 

 day, when I saw it growing out of a small seam 

 on the face of a great lichen- covered wall of 

 rock, where no soil or mould was visible, — a 

 jet of foliage and color shooting out of a black 

 line on the face of a perpendicular mountain 

 wall and rising up like a tiny fountain, its 

 drops turning to flame-colored jewels that hung 

 and danced in the air against the gray rocky 

 surface, — its beauty became something magical 

 and audacious. On little narrow shelves in the 

 rocky wall the corydalis was blooming, and 

 among the loose boulders at its base the blood- 

 root shone conspicuous, suggesting snow rather 

 than anything more sanguine. 



