NATIVE WILD FLOWERS 



by wayside waste lands, often mingled with the Pearly 

 Everlasting (Antennaria margaritacea) and other common 

 species of the order. 



It is so commonly seen and so little cared for as to have 

 obtained the name of Neglected Everlasting. Truly even a 

 flower may be without honor in its own country ! 



There is another plant of this family, found in old dry 

 pastures, with straw-colored shining flowers; but it lacks 

 the aromatic fragrance and dark-green narrow revolute 

 gummy leaves of the preceding ; it is branching with a wide- 

 spread corymbed head and has the leaves decurrent on the 

 stem, whence its name G. decurrens. This is an earlier 

 species than the Neglected Everlasting. 



PEARLY EVERLASTING Antennaria margaritacea (Hook.). 



The abundance of the common Pearly Everlasting induced 

 many of the backwoods settlers' wives to employ the light 

 dry flowers as a substitute for feathers in stuffing beds and 

 cushions; and very sweet and comfortable these primitive 

 pillows and cushions are, as well as pleasantly fragrant, 

 for the Pearly Everlasting is also sweet-scented, though not 

 so much so as G. polycephalum; the heads are soft, elastic, 

 and easily obtained. The French peasants still hang up 

 wreaths or crosses of the white-flowered Everlastings in 

 churches and upon the graves of the dead, to mark where 

 one fair bud or blossom has dropped from the parent tree 

 to mingle with its kindred dust. It is a fond old custom 

 which time and the world's later fashions have not yet 

 changed among the simple habitants. 



Surely we may say with the sweet poet : 



" They are love's last gift. 



Bring flowers pale flowers." 



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