12 SOME AUTUMN DAYS IN IOWA 
haps, just as you come to a little brook like that 
from which Sir Launfal gave the beggar a drink 
you will see a patch of fringed gentians. Then 
you may sit and let their surpassing loveliness sa¬ 
tiate your soul. 
There is no blue in the flower kingdom quite 
so enchanting as the blue of the fringed gentian. 
“Such a dark blue,” writes Thoreau, “surpassing 
that of the male blue bird’s back.” Even Bry¬ 
ant’s line does not fully measure the blueness. The 
deep dark blue of the fringed gentian is bluer than 
any Iowa sky. And Iowa skies are reputed to be 
the bluest in the world unless it be those of Swit¬ 
zerland. 
In the big sloughs which often lie at the foot 
of what the geologists call the “paha ridges” the 
flower hunter may often find the fringed gentian 
(Gentiana crinita), and the closed gentian ( Gen - 
tiana andrewsii ). One specimen of the fringed gen¬ 
tian found recently had upwards of three dozen 
blossoms on a single plant, many of them withered, 
but a large number of them magnificent in their 
beauty, two inches and more long and as big 
round as a man’s third finger. But don’t pull up 
every blossom to be found. One for the vase on 
your library table, and one for an appreciative 
flower-lover will be enough. For the gentian is 
an annual and is too rare to be ruthlessly destroyed. 
