NATIVE WILD FLOWERS 
by wayside waste lands, often mingled with the Pearly 
Everlasting (Antennaria margaritacea) and other common 
species of the order. 
It is so commonly seen and so little cared for as to have 
obtained the name of Neglected Everlasting. Truly even a 
flower may be without honor in its own country! 
There is another plant of this family, found in old dry 
pastures, with straw-colored shining flowers; but it lacks 
the aromatic fragrance and dark-green narrow revolute 
gummy leaves of the preceding; it is branching with a wide- 
spread corymbed head and has the leaves decurrent on the 
stem, whence its name, G. decurrens. This is an earlier 
species than the Neglected Everlasting. 
PEARLY EVERLASTING—Antennaria margaritacea (Hook.). 
The abundance of the common Pearly Everlasting induced 
many of the backwoods settlers’ wives to employ the light 
dry flowers as a substitute for feathers in stuffing beds and 
cushions; and very sweet and comfortable these primitive 
pillows and cushions are, as well as pleasantly fragrant, 
for the Pearly Everlasting is also sweet-scented, though not 
so much so as G. polycephalum; the heads are soft, elastic, 
and easily obtained. The French peasants still hang up 
wreaths or crosses of the white-flowered Everlastings in 
churches and upon the graves of the dead, to mark where 
one fair bud or blossom has dropped from the parent tree 
to mingle with its kindred dust. It is a fond old custom 
which time. and the world’s later fashions have not yet 
changed among the simple habitants. 
Surely we may say with the sweet poet: 
‘They are love’s last gift, 
Bring flowers—pale flowers.” 
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