THE WILD GARDEN. 181 
tubers, formerly a favorite food of those silent tribes whose flints 
are now turned up by the plough within the shadow of the plant. ' 
What pathetic traditions of the primeval American are brought 
from the wilderness to our doors in the fragrance of this true na- 
tive vine! How many of the wild blossoming things among which 
it now twines are but its comparatively new acquaintances — 
plants which have usurped the soil in the revolutionary path of 
the “ pale-face,” and equally deserving the historic impeachment 
of the “rib-grass plantain,” known everywhere among the Indians 
as the “white man’s foot !” 
The list of “naturalized foreigners” among our wildest and 
most common flora would astonish the botanical neophyte even as 
it continually does the student of botany. These European floral 
immigrants have followed the track of the white man, and so mo- 
nopolized the soil that it is no longer possible to distinguish the 
native from the naturalized. Indeed, the “true American” would 
seem to be equally indistinguishable, whether among the blossoms 
or their patriotic admirers. 
Summer after summer, through the medium of the journals, 
the public is treated to the annual warm discussion concerning 
the most worthy choice of a national flower; a perennial crop of 
special pleas of mingled wheat, chaff, and tares, which offers much 
food for mirthful, tolerant, or serious consideration to the consist- 
ent citizen, whether he be botanical, natural historical, poetical, or 
patriotic in his bias. A long list of candidates has been put in 
the field. If there has been one feature stranger than another in 
the amiable and entirely needless controversy, it has been that the 
one and only authorized floral claimant for the nation’s honor, the 
one perfect symbol of the democracy, unity, grace, wealth, pros- 
perity, generosity, and beckoning welcome of the new continent, 
should have found only a bare majority of champions. The won- 
der is that she should have stood in need of a champion at all, 
when she speaks so ably for herself along every road-side, in 
every field, wood, and prairie, from Nova Scotia to Mexico, and 
from Puget Sound to Key West—a prophet of El Dorado in the 
primeval wilderness, and a preordained embodiment of the new 
