XXXVIII. SUMMER WILD FLOWERS 



"He is happiest who hath power 

 To gather wisdom from a flower, 

 And wake his heart in every hour 

 To pleasant gratitude. ' ' 



— Wordsworth. 



The splendor of summer would not be complete without its 

 splendid flowers. They punctuate the slopes. They adorn 

 the roadsides. They mellow the air with fragrance. They 

 fill the fields with the humming of bees, and with the flashing 

 wings of brilliant butterflies. 



The summer flowers are not like those of spring. They 

 grow more openly, and fling out their colors like banners 

 by the roadsides. Spring flowers 

 flash up on fragile evanescent 

 stems, solitary or in little clusters 

 of unstudied grace ; but the summer 

 flowers take their time, developing 

 first strong stems and abundant 

 leafage, and then producing great 

 compound clusters in fine mechani- 

 cal adjustment. Saint John's worts 

 and campions and sunflowers and 

 daisies — how lustily they crowd to 

 fill the wayside with their banked- 

 up foliage masses, and then how gloriously they bloom! 



Summer flowers are, mostly, rather small, and produce 

 their brilliant effects by the massing of great numbers together. 

 A few large ones, like wild roses, are solitary. Others of 

 moderate size like gerardias and other figworts are hung 

 out in open panicles; those of the common mullein are in 

 long stiff erect spikes. Many of the mint flowers are in 

 shorter and denser spikes, but most of the lesser flowers are 



264 



Fig. 103. Turtle-heads' (.Che- 

 lone glabra:) a , the flower from 

 the side; b, the same with a 

 bumble-bee entering. 



