92 FAMILIAR FLOWERS OF FIELD AND GARDEN. 



mountains, and in Gibraltar there are two wild species 

 of mignonette, eacli tiny in figure but having the un- 

 mistakable family look ; they are R. sesamonides and 

 JR. glauca. Mignonette is an annual with the happy 

 faculty of blooming all summer long ; it wastes its 

 sweetness, not " on the desert air," but in the farm- 

 house kitchen and the fashionable drawing-room. It 

 is a simple flower with the charm of perfect sweet- 

 ness, a quality quite lacking in many a showy flower, 

 and the sandier the soil is, the sweeter it grows. 



Phlox is the Greek name for fire. 

 Phlox Bmmmondii, 



Annual. and, although all the phloxes are 



Fhloz decussata, not fiery-hued, there are many of 



Perennial. i -ii. i i 



them brilhant and red enough to 

 deserve the name. They are North American plants, 

 and the annual variety comes from Texas. The 

 range of color in the Drummond phlox is extraor- 

 dinary. There are cream-white, pale yellow, pale 

 salmon-pink, deep pink, crimson-pink, magenta, pur- 

 ple, lilac, pure red, crimson, and solferino. But 

 there is no orange-nor scarlet. The five divisions of 

 the corolla are often starry-eyed, and sometimes they 

 are striped; in the varieties cwspz'cZato and fimhriata 

 they are slashed and toothed in a remarkable way. 

 The star-shaped flowers are curiously marked with 

 color, and the corolla is often so deeply incised that 

 the flower is no longer recognizable as the sober flat- 



