The Blue Flower Border 
265 
Ruskin, who called it the soft warm-scented Bru- 
nelle, and told of the fine purple gleam of its hooded 
blossom : “ the two uppermost petals joined like an 
old-fashioned enormous hood or bonnet ; the lower 
petal torn deep at the edges into a kind of fringe,” 
— and he said it was a “ Brownie flower,” a little 
eerie and elusive in its meaning. I do not like it 
because it has such a disorderly, unkempt look, it 
always seems bedraggled. 
The pretty ladder-like leaf of Jacob's Ladder is 
most delicate and pleasing in the garden, and its 
blue bell-flowers are equally refined. This is truly 
an old-fashioned plant, but well worth universal 
cultivation. 
In answer to the question, What is the bluest 
flower in the garden or field? one answered Fringed 
Gentian ; another the Forget-me-not, which has 
much pink in its buds and yellow in its blossoms ; 
another Bee Larkspur ; and the others Centaurea 
cyanus or Bachelor's Buttons, a local American name 
for them, which is not even a standard folk name, 
since there are twenty-one English plants called 
Bachelor's Buttons. Ragged Sailor is another 
American name. Corn-flower, Blue-tops, Blue 
Bonnets, Bluebottles, Loggerheads are old English 
names. Queerer still is the title Break-your-spec- 
tacles. Hawdods is the oldest name of all. Fitz- 
herbert, in his Boke of Husbandry , 1586, thus 
describes briefly the plant : — 
“ Hawdod hath a blewe floure, and a few ly tie leaves, 
and hath fyve or syxe branches floured at the top/’ 
