WATERSIDE WEEDS. 181 



flowers to be selected for cultivation were the biggest 

 and brightest in hue the roses, paeonies, sunflowers, and 

 hollyhocks. It is only very lately that we have begun 

 also to choose some plants for their foliage or their 

 general effect ; to grow purple-leaved coleuses, quaintly 

 lop-sided begonias, and crimson-hearted caladiums in 

 our greenhouses ; to pleach out pampas-grass, and 

 weeping willows, and feathery deodars with artful care- 

 lessness on our lawns and shrubberies ; to cover the 

 naked crannies of our poor imitation rock-work with the 

 dainty tracery of ferns and club- mosses. Even now, we 

 have not paid sufficient attention to the ornamental 

 value of the common wind-fertilised plants. They have 

 no gay petals to attract us, like their insect-haunted 

 allies ; they do not strike the eye at once in the dappled 

 meadows, like the buttercups, the fritillaries, the clematis, 

 and the wild daffodils ; yet they have a wonderful 

 indescribable grace and beauty of their own, which 

 nobody can fail to appreciate, at least when once attention 

 has been consciously directed to their more modest and 

 retiring shapes. Their flowers usually either hang out 

 loosely in long waving panicles, like the grasses and 

 sedges, or else cluster closely together in curious globular 

 or cylindrical heads, like the reeds and tne catkins. It 

 is to this class that most of the waterside weeds in 

 England belong : and they share with all other wind- 

 fertilised plants not only the common gracefulness of 

 habit, but also the common marks of degradation or 

 degeneracy from higher and more conspicuous petal- 

 bearing ancestors. 



Look first at the floating pond-weed here, with its 

 delicate leaves just basking on the surface of the pool, 



