The Plant's Response 189 



to speak to us of the freshness of some new, eternal morn- 

 ing. 



It is when plants begin thus their highest and purest 

 ministry that their response also becomes more and more 

 refined, more and more part of the material of art. We 

 have touched the wild rose in its simple beauty, with 

 fine rose-red petals and a yellow disk of stamens, and it 

 blushes in all the delicacy of the prairie queen, or masses 

 its fire in the Jacqueminot or American Beauty, or lends 

 itself to the production of that most subtle of delicate 

 perfumes, the odor and sweetness of the tea-roses in all 

 their manifold forms, or fairly glows in the blaze of the 

 crimson velvet, or melts in the gold of the yellow Mare- 

 chal Neill. There are more than four thousand varieties 

 of roses. 



The compositae with fruitful center and rays that affect 

 yellow, white or blue or red, we cultivate and behold! 

 the daisy becomes a ball of orange or white, or lilac, 

 or violet, or all combined, and chrysanthemums simply 

 fill the gardens of the world and make our social func- 

 tions a spectacle of splendor. Pansies are listed in the 

 thousands, and so are carnations, and dahlias and 

 fuchsias, and all the rest. Nor is this all: we blend 

 these things in park and garden to produce effects that 

 make of our effort a picture, a blending of harmonious 

 form and color, pleasing as some majestic masterpiece, 

 whose conception and execution mark the summit of 

 human creative skill. For this purpose not flowers alone 

 respond but trees and shrubs in all their manifold wealth 

 of form and habit, and especially in their docility, in the 

 readiness with which, then properly treated, they lend 

 themselves to our highest decorative purpose. 



