Old Flower Favorites 
x 79 
“ I love every flower that grows/’ but I answer with 
emphasis, “ I don’t ! ” I have ever disliked the 
Portulaca, — I hate its stems. It is my fate never 
to escape it. I planted it once to grow under Sweet 
Alyssum in the little enclosure of earth behind my 
city home; when I returned in the autumn, every- 
thing was covered, blanketed, overwhelmed with 
Portulaca. Since then it comes up even in the 
grass, and seems to thrive by being trampled upon. 
The Portulaca was not a flower of colonial days ; I 
am glad to learn our great-grandmothers were not 
pestered with it ; it was not described in the Botani- 
cal Magazine till 1829. 
I do not care for the Petunia close at hand on 
account of its sickish odor. But in the dusky border 
the flowers shine like white stars (page 1 80), and make 
you almost forgive their poor colors in the daylight. 
I never liked the Calceolaria. Every child in our 
town used to have a Calceolaria in her own small gar- 
den plot, but I never wanted one. I care little for 
Chrysanthemums ; they fill in the border in autumn, 
and they look pretty well growing, but I like few of 
the flowers close at hand. By some curious twist of 
a brain which, alas ! is apt not to deal as it is ex- 
pected and ought to, with sensations furnished to it, I 
have felt this distaste for Chrysanthemums since 
* 
I attended a Chrysanthemum Show. Of course, I 
ought to love them far more, and have more eager 
interest in them — but I do not. Their sister, the 
China Aster, I care little for. The Germans call 
Asters “death-flowers.” The Empress of Austria 
at the Swiss hotel where she lodged just before she 
