82 The American Flower Garden 



passage paid across the ocean, have escaped from their keepers 

 through many fences and are now on a triumphal march to free- 

 dom. So are the small, speckled red blackberry lilies that origin- 

 ally came from China. Escaping from gardens here and there, 

 they have already attained the respectable range from Connecticut 

 to Georgia westward to Indiana and Missouri. How many 

 beautiful flowers, commonly grown in our gardens here, but 

 which, of course, are the wild flowers of other lands, might become 

 naturalised Americans were we only generous enough to lift a 

 few plants, scatter a few seeds over our fences into the fields and 

 roadsides to raise the bars of their prison, as it were, and set 

 them free! Most of them are doomed to stay forever in prim, 

 rigidly cultivated, cell-like flower beds. Some, like the blue corn 

 flower, are waiting only until a chance to bolt for freedom presents 

 itself, and away they go. Lucky are they if every flower they 

 produce is not plucked before a single seed can be set. Each 

 plant has some device for travelling, however slowly, or for send- 

 ing its offspring away from home to found new colonies, if man 

 would but let it alone. Better still, give the eager traveller a lift! 



Not alone is the prophet without honour in his own country. 

 A century before the lovely mountain laurel was appreciated here, 

 Peter Kalm had sent specimens to Europe, where it immediately 

 became a garden favourite. Even to this day numbers of nursery 

 kalmia plants, as well as our native Rhododendron maximum and 

 Catawbiense and their hybrids, the best azaleas evolved from our 

 bare-stemmed Pinxter flower, the pure pink A. Vaseyi, the deli- 

 ciously fragrant white azalea of our swamps, and the gorgeous 

 flame-coloured azalea from the Carolina mountains, return to us by 

 way of Europe. What comfortable little fortunes that might easily 

 have been earned by Americans, now stand to the credit of the 



