COLOUR IN MY GARDEN 



tint and shade. There is but one magenta, but about it are 

 the gentle sisters of the discredited clan: Liseran purple and 

 rose purple, dull and dusky purple, Indian lake, dahlia car- 

 mine, auricula purple, pale and deep Rosalane pink, all of 

 which we are accustomed to lump as magenta. And on 

 Plate 12 of that same chart there are yet others that come 

 under the unjust ban: the mallow pinks and purples, 

 amaranths and aster purple. These are beautiful colours 

 as seen against the soft gray background of the page. Per- 

 haps if we could strike out the word magenta, so laden with 

 custom-made stigma, and use only these other colour names, 

 all pleasant sounding and suggestive, we should lose much 

 of the antipathy now felt for the flowers that wear it. 



When the early writers had magenta to name they usually 

 wrote it as "a little purple mixed with red," and to give 

 it a more poetic but none the less exact description we 

 might reverse Dante's idea of the colour of Apple blossoms 

 — "more than that of roses but less than that of violets." 



In my garden I have been able to match but one flower to 

 the magenta of the colour chart. This is the Rose Loose- 

 strife (Ly thrum Salicaria). It is pure magenta, but in 

 eight catalogues examined it is described as rose pink, or 

 bright pink. One seedsman ventures so near the taboo 

 name as to call it rosy-purple, another flies from it to the 

 length of describing an improved variety as "glistening 

 cherry red." Even in the "Cyclopedia of Horticulture" 

 it is described as "rose colour." 



It is small wonder that when our minds are set upon, 

 and some garden space prepared for, glistening cherry red, 

 or the ever-cordial and agreeable rose colour, we are ex- 



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