HOW TO SUCCEED 29 
Canterbury bells all died.” Of course, they did; 
their time had arrived and they went the way of 
their kind. This, person should have known that 
some plants are biennials, of which the Canterbury 
bell is one. Biennials, relatively few in garden 
cultivation, bloom normally in their second sum- 
mer from seed; then they die. Occasionally, when 
the seed is sown later than spring, they survive 
two winters. 
Annuals, as the name implies, are plants of a 
year. ‘They are born in the spring and if their 
life has not spent itself by the end of autumn the 
winter’s cold blots it out. In gardens, seedlings 
from sowings too late in the year to bring the 
plants to maturity will sometimes bravely endure 
a winter rather than perish in unfruitfulness. The 
name annual is necessarily elastic in the usage of 
cold climates, as freezing will kill some plants 
that naturally would go on flourishing. Thus the 
four-o’clock, unless the root is taken up and stored 
for the winter, is an annual in the North, though 
in its native tropics it is a perennial. 
Strictly speaking, all trees and shrubs as well 
as those herbs that are neither annual nor bi- 
ennial are perennials; the first two are differen- 
tiated as woody, the last as herbaceous. In garden 
usage perennial is hardy herbaceous perennial, for 
short. Herbaceous plant and hardy plant are oc- 
casional alternatives. Bulbs, although veritable 
herbaceous perennials, are usually classed by them- 
selves; which is convenient if it is not botanical, 
