CHAPTER XIX 

 MICHAELMAS DAISIES 



A symphony in purple, the colour of the organ peal are they. 



— Martha Flint. 



SOMEWHERE I have read that there are ten thousand 

 members of the ubiquitous clan Compositae, but 

 sad to tell most of them are the most graceless weeds. 

 Among the rowdy crew we find Horseweed, Ragweed, 

 Beggar-ticks, Burdock, Dandelion, Hawkweed, Mayweed, 

 Wild Lettuce, and a host of others that deserve to be frowned 

 upon, but like the little girl in the nursery rhyme, when 

 they are good the composites are very, very good, and 

 never do they attain to such an eminence of goodness as in 

 the Michaelmas Daisy. There are few more useful and 

 charming flowers for use in the hardy garden. Many 

 flowers, however, suffer the fate of prophets and have no 

 honour in their own country. Our Michaelmas Daisy is one 

 of these. 



More than three hundred years ago young Tradescant, 

 son of the great gardener of the seventeenth century, took 

 back with him from America to the Royal Gardens in Eng- 

 land a number of our wild flowers, among them the pretty wild 

 Aster or Michaelmas Daisy that bears his name (Aster Tra- 



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