BLUE AND PURPLE WILD FLOWERS 



are narrow and lance-shaped, and are set directly on the 

 stalk. The flower heads are very showy. They are 

 an inch and a half broad, and several or many are set 

 on the tips of branchlets, forming a rather flat-topped 

 arrangement. The disc florets are yellow centred, and are 

 surrounded with from fifteen to thirty bright violet rays. 

 They are set in partly spreading, sticky green cups. 



NEW ENGLAND ASTER 



Aster novae-angliae. Thistle Family 



Here, perhaps, is the most popular and the most 

 captivating of the taller Asters. The very name 

 of this familiar and delightfully handsome plant 

 rings true with the Puritanic comeliness which it grace- 

 fully diffuses. Altogether, it is one of those happy and 

 pleasing combinations that fairly thrills one with its 

 pure, wholesome loveliness, and it provokes an irre- 

 sistible admiration wherever it abounds. Gardeners 

 have cultivated this Aster successfully in England, but, 

 discontented with their restraint and coddling, it has 

 escaped therefrom, and asserting the original element 

 of freedom, become naturalized in adjacent fields 

 and byways. Then, again, it has a cunning knack 

 of closing its so-called "petals" or rays at sunset, 



Like the tots of ancient days 



Cuddling up from sight, 

 When curfew through autumn's haze 

 Bade them nightie-night. 



This showy Starwort raises its rough, stout, leafy 

 and branching stalk from two to eight feet high. The 



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