BLUE AND PURPLE WILD FLOWERS 
are narrow and lance-shaped, and are set directly on the 
stalk. The flower heads are very showy. ‘They are 
an inch and a half broad, and several or many are set 
on the tips of branchlets, forming a rather flat-topped 
arrangement. The disc florets are yellow centred,and are 
surrounded with from fifteen to thirty bright violet rays. 
They are set in partly spreading, sticky green cups. 
NEW ENGLAND ASTER 
Aster novae-dngliae. Thistle Family 
Here, perhaps, is the most popular and the most 
captivating of the taller Asters. The very name 
of this familiar and delightfully handsome plant 
rings true with the Puritanic comeliness which it grace- 
fully diffuses. Altogether, it is one of those happy and 
pleasing combinations that fairly thrills one with its 
pure, wholesome loveliness, and it provokes an irre- 
sistible admiration wherever it abounds. Gardeners 
have cultivated this Aster successfully in England, but, 
discontented with their restraint and coddling, it has 
escaped therefrom, and asserting the original element 
of freedom, become naturalized in adjacent fields 
and byways. Then, again, it has a cunning knack 
of closing its so-called “petals” or rays at sunset, 
Like the ‘tots of ancient days 
Cuddling up from sight, 
When curfew through autumn’s haze 
Bade them nightie-night. 
This showy Starwort raises its rough, stout, leafy 
and branching stalk from two to eight feet high. The 
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