ACCORDING TO SEASON 



Fields of 

 Paradise 



Painted 

 cup 



Italians — Fra Angelico, for example — caught bet- 

 ter the spirit of the fields of Paradise when they 

 starred them with separate, gem-like flowers, than 

 do our modern men that of our own meadows, 

 which they dash with reckless splashes of color, 

 expecting the leafless, stemless blotches to do 

 duty for the most exquisitely tinted and deli- 

 cately modelled of Nature's products. And I 

 think that one recalls more vividly in the gal- 

 leries of Florence than in those of Fifty-seventh 

 Street the near effect of the flower-spangled 

 fields which border our Hudson. 



A flower of the June fields somewhat infrequent 

 in my experience is the painted cup. This plant 

 owes its effectiveness, not to the blossoms, which, 

 pale yellow in color, are rather small and incon- 

 spicuous, but to the scarlet leaves by which they 

 are surrounded. It is one of the plants which love 

 to grow in masses. The sensation on seeing for 

 the first time a sunlit meadow patched with these 

 intensely colored leaves is not soon forgotten. I 

 always associate the painted cup with the song of 

 the bobolink. The first time I ever met with it, 

 the sweet morning air was alive with the happy 

 tinkle of these birds. Their black and white coats 

 flashed in the sunshine and hovered above or dis- 

 appeared beneath the glistening grasses and gay 

 flowers of the surrounding meadow. 



34 



