CHAPTEE XVIII 



COLOUES OF FLOWERS 



I AM always surprised at the vague, not to say reckless, 

 fashion in which garden folk set to work to describe 

 the colours of flowers, and at the way in which quite 

 wrong colours are attributed to them. It is done in 

 perfect good faith, and without the least consciousness 

 of describing wrongly. In many cases it appears to 

 be because the names of certaia substances have been 

 used conventionally or poetically to convey the idea of 

 certain colours. And some of these errors are so old 

 that they have acquired a kind of respectability, and 

 are in a way accepted without challenge. When they 

 are used about familiar flowers it does not occur to one 

 to detect them, because one knows the flower and its 

 true colour ; but when the same old error is used in 

 the description of a new flower, it is distinctly mislead- 

 ing. For instance, when we hear of golden butter- 

 cups, we know that it means bright-yellow buttercups ; 

 but in the case of a new flower, or one not generally 

 known, surely it is better and more accurate to say 

 bright yellow at once. Nothing is more frequent in 

 plant catalogues than "bright golden yellow," when 



221 



