Vices of Plants in 



of the care given during infancy, the cost of transportation, 

 plus the nurseryman's modest profit, a plant repudiates its 

 debt to the past, and disappears from pure sloth. Of course 

 it is easier to die than to live, sometimes. We all know, 

 when beset with the thorns of life, how cool and inviting the 

 ground is six feet down; but we are trained to the moral 

 obligation to live, and live we do, in the face of fire, flood 

 and disaster of every sort, if we are plucky and Atropos keeps 

 her shears in her pocket. As a product of commercial enter- 

 prise plants have no right to shirk duty and go into bank- 

 ruptcy; or worse, to disappear altogether. Do they commit 

 suicide, or abscond, for they take every available asset with 

 them? To what refuge do they flee? Yes, I know my 

 remarks are growing pointed, and I mean to go still further 

 and name as a chief offender the Lilium auratum, long recog- 

 nized as a garden absconder, and lovely pale pink Pyrethrum 

 bore it company. Among the idle loafers who ate and drank 

 heartily at my table two summers ago and made no return 

 were Lilium candidum true they were planted in a place 

 too wet and shady, but what of that? Funkia subcordata, 

 Hydrangea paniculata, only recently turned into a slothful 

 vagabond, tritoma, Japanese iris, Stachys lantana, lusty look- 

 ing Canterbury bells, two-year-old pentstemons and gerar- 

 dias all went out on a strike, and their labor had to be 

 done by overworked annuals. Even a wee abortive blossom 

 would have shown a good intention. True it was a cold 

 summer, but sometimes one has to work to keep warm. 

 Given a worm at its root which is a plant's- heart a lawful 

 disease, the destroying hand of Fate in the form of drought, 

 or ripe old age, it is right that a plant shall die let it first 

 discharge its debt of bloom to the race; but no word of exten- 

 uation can be said of the plant that sulks and won't work. 

 For this cause came it into the world. 



