11 



plants such as the trilliums and the jack-in-the-pulpit, where the 

 leaves inevitably are taken in picking the flower. The danger is 

 much less in plants which develop tall flowering-stems that are 

 leafy nearly to the ground, provided the flowers are broken oflF 

 with a short stem and few leaves, care being taken to leave suf- 

 ficient foliage on the stump to maintain the continued activity 

 of the underground parts. To this class belong various of the 

 wild lilies, the increasing scarcity of which is due very largely to 

 the insistence of people, intentional or otherwise, on picking 

 long stems. The flowers alone of any plant, for that matter, 

 may be plucked without endangering the life of the plant as an 

 individual. Such procedure is practicable, however, only in the 

 case of forms such as the dog-tooth violet, the pink lady's slipper, 

 and the Dutchman's breeches which have long-stemmed flowers; 

 and even with these it is important to remember that the removal 

 of the flowers, while it may not interfere with the life of the plant 

 as an individual, does prevent the development of seeds. 



There are a goodly number of herbaceous perennials, however, 

 in which the multiplication in the number of individual plants is 

 not wholly dependent upon propagation by seeds; although here 

 again it is the seeds which must be depended on if new individuals 

 are to be developed at any great distance from the parent plant. 

 These plants propagate themselves more or less copiously by 

 means of rootstocks and other so-called "vegetative" methods. 

 Such, for example, are the golden rods and the asters, which 

 almost invariably show young sprouts with well-developed 

 clumps of leaves around the base of the flowering-stem. In 

 plants of this description the entire stem may be broken ofi^, with 

 reasonable assurance that the particular individual will continue 

 not only to thrive but to multiply. Again, in some perennial 

 plants, such as the violets, there are two kinds of flowers: large, 

 showy ones which are mostly sterile, and small, inconspicuous 

 ones which produce the seeds. But even in picking violets, more 

 especially the leafy-stemmed forms, it must be remembered that 

 the development of the inconspicuous fertile flowers cannot take 

 place in the absence of leaves. 



Coming now to the practical application of the facts just out- 

 lined to the principle of wild flower protection, it would seem a 

 fairly conservative general rule that all wild plants should be 

 picked sparingly, if at all, with the exception of those which 



