Cornflower

“ Besides cornflower, a few other species are worth growing as garden plants; they are readily grown in ordinary soil:—C. Cineraria, a half-hardy perennial, native of Italy, is remarkable for its white downy foliage ”

“ See the bright horror of it! It's roaring out of the skies,
And the whole red world is a-welter. . . . Oh God! I'm afraid! I'm afraid!
Cornflowers, you say, just cornflowers, gemming the golden grain ”

“ I stood a while, picked up the bunch of cornflowers, and walked out of the grove to the field. The sun was low in the pale, clear sky; its rays seemed to have faded and turned cold; they did not shine now, they spread in an even, almost watery, light. There was only a half-hour left until evening, and twilight was setting in. A violent wind was blowing fast toward me across the yellow, dried-up stubble-field ”

“ The seedlings which, sown in the open, were now rewarding Jim's matutinal thinnings-out, were a comfort and encouragement. The intensely blue cornflowers furnished many a dinner-table, and though they did not face the wind with all the backbone desirable, I had not staked them, they formed a very good background to the less tall pinky-white godetias, and these, too, in July were a boon to those Others. They last very well in water, and, if diligently cut and not allowed to seed, they continue a fine show of bloom into the early autumn. ”

“ Nevertheless, I would have used Gerarde's name, if the corn-rose were as much a rose as the corn-flag is a flag. But it isn't. The rose and lily have quite different relations to the corn. The lily is grass in loveliness, as the corn is grass in use; and both grow together in peace—gladiolus in the wheat, and narcissus in the pasture. But the rose is of another and higher order than the corn, and you never saw a cornfield overrun with sweetbriar or apple-blossom.
They have no mind, they, to get into the wrong place. ”

“ One noble product of nature did not refuse to flourish there,—the tall, stately, beautiful, soft-haired, many-jointed, generous maize or Indian corn, which thrives on sand and defies the blaze of our shrivelling summer. What child but loves to wander in its forest-like depths, amidst the rustling leaves and with the lofty tassels tossing their heads high above him! There are two aspects of the cornfield which always impress my imagination: the first when it has reached its full growth, and its ordered ranks look like an army on the march with its plumed and bannered battalions ”

“ But the days went by, the spring showers moistened the earth, and the sun shone; and so the seed-corn swelled, and, bursting open, thrust out two little hands, one reaching down to hold itself firmly in the earth, and one reaching up to the light and air. The first was never very beautiful, but certainly quite useful; for, besides holding the corn firmly in its place, it drew up water and food for the whole plant: but the second spread out two long, slender green leaves, that waved with every breath of air, and seemed to rejoice in every ray of sunshine. ”

“ The answer to Spink and Skabootch is, “Next week you will learn all about where the corn fairies get the nails to nail down the corn if you will keep your faces washed and your ears washed till next week.”
And the next time you stand watching a big cornfield in late summer or early fall, when the wind is running across the green and silver, listen with your littlest and newest ears. Maybe you will hear the corn fairies going pla-sizzy pla-sizzy-sizzy, softer than an eye wink, softer than a Nebraska baby’s thumb. ”

“ MR. VERDANT GREEN TRAVELS NORTH.
ULY: fierce and burning!
A day to tinge the green corn with a golden hue. A day to scorch grass into hay between sunrise and sunset. A day in which to rejoice in the cool thick masses of trees, and to lie on one's back under their canopy, and look dreamily up, through its rents, at the peep of hot, cloudless, blue sky. ”

“ In the field we see the corn falls with the first hard frost, while the asters along the roadway hold their freshness and continue to blossom until early winter congeals the sap. Turn to the flower-garden, and we see many of our tender plants in the withered brownness of death, and by their side stands the Anterrhinum in the beauty of its pristine freshness, bearing its blossoms of every size from the minutest bud up to the full flower. ”

“ With new leaves half-grown, with blossoms bursting, it is hard to tell without close inspection which is which, so tender and rich are the colors which unfold from all buds. The yellow of the dandelion, the blue of wood violets, and the purple of the wild cranesbill are not more delicate, nor are they so rich as the red of the young leaves of the white oaks, now as large as a mouse's ear, which is the Indian sign for the time to plant corn. The blossoms of the berry bushes are no more flower-like than the young leaves among which they grow. ”

“ Smooth green pastures, where flocks and herds lowed and bleated, and long slips of corn waved in the summer sunshine, and fruit-trees which in spring were hung with white and crimson blossoms, and whose branches in autumn bowed beneath the weight of heavy fruitage, now swelled above the swampy waste, and gave a cheerful look to the grassy glade which had made room for the bright sunshine to enter into the very heart of those gloomy old forests. ”

“ The vines of these vegetables grow in the same soil, and often from the same hill, and cling lovingly around each other, and thus are true representatives of those who watch over them. The maidens are ever young, and are clothed with the leaves of the plants among which they dwell. She who is the guardian spirit of corn, has for her drapery the long tapering leaves of the maize, ornamented with its silken tassels, which also are bound in wreaths about her brow. ”

“ The maize, or Indian corn, had attained its ripest hue, and been plucked from the dry stems, which had been deprived of their leaves as soon as the ear was fully formed, that nothing might screen the sun's hottest rays from the grain, and the golden-colored pumpkins which had been planted between the rows, that no land might be wasted, even left to ripen alone amid the withering corn-stalks. ”

“ The dayseye hugging the earth
in August, ha! Spring is
gone down in purple,
weeds stand high in the corn,
the rainbeaten furrow
is clotted with sorrel
and crabgrass, the
branch is black under
the heavy mass of the leaves—
The sun is upon a
slender green stem
ribbed lengthwise. ”

“ It is pleasant to have the bees come and suck honey out of my squash-blossoms, though, when they have laden themselves, they fly away to some unknown hive, which will give me back nothing in return for what my garden has given them. But there is much more honey in the world, and so I am content. Indian corn, in the prime and glory of its verdure, is a very beautiful vegetable, both considered in the separate plant, and in a mass in a broad field, rustling, and waving, and surging up and down in the breeze and sunshine of a summer afternoon. ”

“ Corn-stems are firm and dry, but grass-stems hold the soaking moisture of rain and dew, which saturates the skin even through fur and feather, and quite beyond the remedy of dog-like shakings. Wheat, as we have said, is the corn most favoured of all creatures—where not planted too thickly, and growing on ground not over clean, but dotted plentifully with bunches of knapweed, thistles, and bindweed, and intersected by furrows where the corn has grown poorly, and with open spaces bare to the wind and sun. ”

“ Day by day it has been a wonder how the corn has thriven and grown, with what vigour the stalks have thickened, enlarged in leaf, and deepened in green. Side by side in due rank and order they have risen, the blades have extended towards one another in loving embrace, until the whole has become a solid square field of corn, the murmur of which is like the distant wash of a languid sea over a pebbly beach. ”

“ Orchards and cornfields ring with the hum of labour; trees bend beneath the thick clusters of rich fruit which bow their branches to the ground; and the corn, piled in graceful sheaves, or waving in every light breath that sweeps above it, as if it wooed the sickle, tinges the landscape with a golden hue. ”

“ Each stalk of corn is a father and mother. It does not live for itself. When it hastens on in the hot days of July, it is not its own beauty that it seeks. It takes that on the way to a higher end. In the cool juices of that polished stem glows the sacred fire of parentage. The arched and rustling leaves borrow of the sun and air food for the coming brood. No sooner does the tassel break forth at the top, than out peer the infant ears nestling at the side of the noble stem. ”

“ It does not take a great man to soon discover that, in raising anything, the greater part of the plants goes into stalk and leaf, and the fruit is a most inconsiderable portion. I plant and hoe a hill of corn: it grows green and stout, and waves its broad leaves high in the air, and is months in perfecting itself, and then yields us not enough for a dinner. It grows because it delights to do so,—to take the juices out of my ground, to absorb my fertilizers, to wax luxuriant, and disport itself in the summer air, and with very little thought of making any return to me. ”

“ Above this was a semicircular canopy cleverly made of cornstalks and bunches of grain and up on the very top was the biggest pumpkin you ever saw cut like a jack-o'-lantern.
More tall cornstalks formed a background to the throne and at each side stood a noble sheaf of wheat. ”

“ The husbandman plants his seed of corn. The seed dies, the little plant lives, and becomes a great stalk, with corn in the milk, and then the full corn in the ear—it could not be otherwise; the golden stalk is the higher, and must be victorious. In the forest there grow a hundred kinds of jack-grapes, small, black and aciduous, and a thousand orange-trees are there, bitter, and with acid that sets the teeth on edge. ”

“ O this young green corn, with its purple anemones, its crimson tulips, its pale almond and intensely bright peach blossom, its fantastically growing fig-trees with their budding tips, its burgeoning vines and spectral olive-trees, all dwelling together on the fair hillside that seems to be smiling self-complacently at its own loveliness! Look at that bank of irises, not yet broken from their sheath! But when they have, what a sight they will be!’
It is always delightful to have one’s feelings expressed by some one else in language of enthusiasm one might oneself be afraid to employ ”

“ By dint of great industry I finished my lessons an hour earlier than usual, and ran into the garden to see how my corn looked. Old gardener himself admitted that it was beautiful; the glossy, green leaves fell back like silken streamers, and displayed the grain with its many shades of green, gold, and brown.
I thought how delightful it would be if I could build a kind of bower over against it, in which my cousins could sit and admire it at their leisure. There were some hop plants growing just in the right place ”

“ It is so in every flower, the yellow dust is a food for the seed. In most plants the seed-pod and the food-dust or pollen are all in one flower, but with the corn they are separate, as you see. Did you ever notice, Davy, how much a cornstalk looks like an Indian, with plumes, and its ear, like a quiver for holding arrows? ”

“ They also think that in the heavens there is a special constellation for Corn, composed of eight black stars, each of which has under its special protection one of the eight varieties of Corn, viz., Rice, Millet, Barley, Wheat, Beans, Peas, Maize, and Hemp. When this cereal constellation is clear, it is a sign that the eight kinds of Corn will ripen; but when, on the contrary, it is dim and obscured, a bad harvest is looked for. ”

“ Stuff the cornucopias with dry moss, and arrange in each a bouquet of grasses, autumn leaves, and dried ferns, dipping the end of each stem in flour paste, to make it secure in its place. Sprays of blackberry-vine or michella, and the satin-white pods of the old-fashioned "honesty," make an effective addition. When done, we have a delightful winter-garden, which will keep its beauty through the months of snow and sleet, and brighten any room it stands in. ”

“ Every one has seen a cornfield. If you pluck up one of the innumerable wheat plants which are fixed in the soil of the field, about harvest time, you will find that it consists of a stem which ends in a root at one end and an ear at the other, and that blades or leaves are attached to the sides of the stem. The ear contains a multitude of oval grains which are the seeds of the wheat plant. ”

“ Far away on each hand stretch the rich pastures and the patches of dark earth, made ready for the seed of broad-leaved, green crops, or touched already with the tint of the tender-bladed autumn-sown corn. ”

“ The tassel produces a great deal of pollen. You have, on passing through a patch of corn, noticed the pollen falling everywhere and covering everything. Ears of corn sometimes have as many as 1000 grains of corn to the cob. Each grain sends out one or more little silks beyond the shuck to catch some of the pollen. Should these little silks fail to catch the grains of pollen, no grains of corn would form on the cob. The father and mother natures must unite if little seed are formed. ”

“ Once, when all the maize was planted, Hiawatha, wise and thoughtful, Spake and said to Minnehaha, To his wife, the Laughing Water: "You shall bless to-night the cornfields, Draw a magic circle round them, To protect them from destruction, Blast of mildew, blight of insect, Wagemin, the thief of cornfields, Paimosaid, who steals the maize-ear! ”

“ The way of the lovers, as they plodded ever southward and westward, led them now past vast fields of yellowing wheat already beginning to ripen for the thresher. Sometimes they drove for miles through towering walls of broad-bladed, cool, green corn ”