CUT FLOWERS 145 



furniture colour repeated in its flowers, and is never so 

 happily beflowered as with double orange Day-Lily or 

 orange Herring-lilies (Lilium croceuon), and with this 

 it often insists on some bowls of purple flowers. This 

 is where they show on the warm-white wall, away from 

 the madder-dyed curtains, in combination with the cool 

 grey-brown of the large oak beams and braces. 



The aspect of a room will also have much to do 

 with the colours of the flowers that look well in it ; 

 the same flower even, seen in a sun-lighted room of 

 south aspect and in a northern one, the quality of 

 whose lighting is largely aflected by a blue sky, will 

 appear to be of quite a different tone. 



It should also be remembered how the colour 

 of flowers is affected by artificial light. There are 

 some forms of electric light of the colder qualities 

 that show colours almost as in daylight, but under 

 all other forms of artificial light it is safest to use 

 white, red, and yellow flowers mainly. Flowers of 

 full blues and violets become dull and colourless ; 

 in pale blues the purity is lost, while some reddish- 

 purples show as a dull red. In all colourings of 

 mauve and lilac the warm quality is increased, so 

 that though purple flowers are best avoided for 

 evening decoration, many kinds, such as the lighter 

 and warmer-coloured of the Michaelmas Daisies, are 

 very pretty and useful. Bright fresh greenery, such 

 as the leaves of FiLnkia gi'andifiora and of forced 

 Lily -of -the -Valley, are all the brighter under the 



K 



