XXXVITI. 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 
bY compound clusters in fine mechani- 
cal adjustment. Saint John’s worts 
Fic. 103. Turtle-heads (Che- and campions and sunflowers and 
lone glabra:) a, the flower from Nae 
fie de) detie Reine Sith 2 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 themassing 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 
