Flowers and Gardens 



ture ; that of the double has a form so 

 vague and featureless that we might easily 

 forget that it was a flower at all, and 

 think that we were looking at a magni- 

 ficent bunch of delicately coloured ribbons. 

 Yet when I speak of colour being sub- 

 ordinated to a purpose in the single flower, 

 I do not mean that it is in anywise of 

 less importance. Colour is nowhere more 

 brilliant and precious than in flowers, but 

 the best effects must be got by judicious 

 use, and not by lavish exuberance.^ 



In every instance where we have seen 

 a flower only in its double state, we feel 

 to know little about it, for it appears but 

 half a flower. There is a plant common 

 in gardens which I have been told is a 

 species of Corchorus.^ I like what I know 

 of it, and would gladly make its nearer 



^ I would not deny that the double flower may at times 

 gain greatly in colour taken as a whole. Look, for in- 

 stance, at the double pink Hepatica, which appears in 

 February and March, gleaming like a little amethyst 

 amongst the Crocuses, the bright clear hue being doubly 

 delightful from its rarity at that early season. Yet, after 

 all, the pink and white Hepaticas are but inferior varieties 

 of the blue, and no double modification of any of them is 

 able to equal that. It will be seen too, that in even the 

 single pink Hepatica the ordinary rule applies — it has 

 more life expression than the double. 



2 [The plant is the double Kerria japonica. It was 

 called Corchorus till the single form was found, and the 

 mistake was discovered. Kerria and Corchorus are of 

 two quite distinct famihes. — H. N. E.] 

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