226 THE ASSOCIATIONS OF FLOWERS 
in greatest beauty during the chilly month of November. 
Cold weather is so unfavourable to flowers in general 
that ver}s few remain to us after winter has commenced, 
and these are generally pale and scentless; but in coun- 
tries where even their coldest seasons have a good degree 
of heat, the earth is always covered with a succession of 
varied floral beauties. In our land the period at which 
flowers are in greatest perfection is during July and Au- 
gust. 
One species only of Michaelmas-daisy grows wild in 
Britain. This (Aster tripolium) is to be found on the 
sea-shore, or upon the marshes adjoining salt rivers. It 
very much resembles the commonest pale-coloured kind of 
the garden, except that its leaves are m^ore succulent. It 
is not found upon the sand; although it is not always 
situated beyond the reach of the spray, nor without the 
sound of the swelling roar of the great waters. But whe- 
ther the sea-shore or the salt-river marsh be its home, the 
plant is impregnated with the saline air of its neighbour- 
hood; and if one of the fleshy leaves be eaten, it will 
often be found as salt and as bitter as the briny drops of 
the ocean. It is among the very few flowers which can 
endure the rough blasts of the saline atmosphere of the 
sea -side. A nosegay gathered from the immediate vicinity 
of the shore would afford little that was gay in tint or 
sweet in fragrance, and would not bear comparison with 
the poorest bouquet that was culled from an inland mea- 
dow. The sea-side poppy is, indeed, of a bright yellow, 
and very similar in the size and shape of its blossom to 
its showy namesake the poppy of the corn-field ; and the 
little thrift, or lady's cushion, as it used to be called, bears 
a pink head of pretty flowers, and is considered orna- 
mental enough to be used in many gardens as an edging 
to the beds, instead of box. The white scurvy grass has 
a little blossom shaped like the wall-flower, though seldom 
a foot high; and there are the sea-side convolvulus, and 
the samphire, and a few others, the most handsome of 
which is the scentless sea-lavender, that grows in a large 
full cluster of lilac flowers, but is like the garden lavender 
in nothing else but its name, as it is lower, and bears large 
ovate leaves. 
Crabbe, whose botanical observations had led him to 
