Gerundive

“ Nothing that May puts into her lap is more exquisite than [Pg 213] are the purple gerardias with which August and September embroider the pasture and the woodland road. They have not the sweet breath of the arbutus, nor even the faint elusive odor of the violet, but for daintiness of form, perfection of color, and gracefulness of habit it would be impossible to praise them too highly. Of our three species, my own favorite is the one of the narrow leaves (Gerardia tenuifolia) , its longer and slighter flower-stems giving it an airiness and grace peculiarly its own. ”

“ A man was looking at him. A man was in the window across the alley looking straight at him. The man was watching him cry. That was where the geranium was supposed to be and it was a man in his undershirt, watching him cry, waiting to watch his throat pop. Old Dudley looked back at the man. It was supposed to be the geranium. The geranium belonged there, not the man. "Where is the geranium?" he called out of his tight throat.
"What you cryin' for?" the man asked. "I ain't never seen a man cry like that."
"Where is the geranium?" Old Dudley quavered. "It ought to be there. Not you." ”

“ Gertrude. Brave heroine of Maria S. Cummins’s Lamplighter. She raises herself by sheer force of energy and talent from the lowly station in which she was born to a position of highest respectability and influence (1853) .
Gerun ́dio (Fray) , i.e. Friar Gerund, the hero and title of a Spanish romance, by the Jesuit De l’Isla. It is a satire on the absurdities and bad taste of the popular preachers of the time (1758) .
Ge ́ryon’s Sons, the Spaniards; so called from Geryon, an ancient king of Spain, whose oxen were driven off by Her ́culês. This task was one of the hero’s “twelve labors.” ”

“ It looks like Mammy Susan has all the luck with citronella and I have luck with rose geranium. My bush is so big it looks like I'll have to get Jo's watering tub from the barn to plant it in. It has long out-grown its pot. I certainly do like to have plenty of healthy rose geranium on hand when I make apple jelly. Nothing gives it the flavour that a leaf of rose geranium will,—just pour the boiling jelly over a leaf—one to each glass. ”

“ She, therefore, went out into the garden, stretched out her crooked stick towards the rosebushes, which, beautifully as they were growing, all sank into the earth, and no one could tell where they had stood. The old woman feared that if Gerda should see the roses, she would then think of her own, would remember little Kay, and run away from her.
She now led Gerda into the flower-garden. [212] Oh, what odour and what loveliness was there! Every flower that one could think of, and of every season, stood there in fullest bloom; no picture-book could be gayer or more beautiful. ”

“ But as it happens, the only geranium in my garden is the one which is grown solely for the scent of its leaves. One year where geraniums might have been I had blue-violet verbenas, sweet-scented and just as easy to grow. I was told to hairpin them to the ground, but out of obstinacy I grew them upright. They did not seem to mind. I have no rage against the blue lobelia, if it is put in a safe place where its colour can do no harm. I do not know why the white lobelia has so much less popularity. One is not bound to grow it as an edging. Now I come to think of it, I believe I hate all edgings. ”

“ Gervase, give me thy hand: I think thou hast more wit than I, that am thy master; and for this speech only I do here create thee my steward. I do long, methinks, to be at an ordinary: to smile at fortune, and to be bountiful. Gervase, about your business, good Gervase, whilst I go and meditate upon a gentleman-like behaviour. I have an excellent gait already, Gervase, have I not?
Staines. Hercules himself, sir, had never a better gait.
Bub. But despatch, Gervase: the satin and the velvet must be thought upon, and the Tu quoque must not be forgotten ”

“ Perhaps amongst plants, there is no genus exhibits such varied and numerous species as Geranium; no one, in which the species are so allied in natural character, or so unfavourable to the sexual system, if some deviation from general rules was not allowed: the founder thought such licence necessary, and we implicitly follow him. Thus far we have thought proper to extenuate in the present instance; for should we follow Mons. L’Heritier, (as most of the modern correctors of Linnæus have done,) a new genus must inevitably be formed for this plant. ”

“ A creeping ivy-leaved geranium, and a very pretty pelargonium, which is also a creeper, grow in these same far-off regions; the flower of the latter is of a beautiful rich maroon and cream-colour, its curiously jointed stem and tiny leaves are very succulent, salt to the taste, and strongly scented with the sweet geranium perfume. It is strange to notice how plants which in Europe are neither saline nor particularly succulent, when growing in the Karroo assume the prevailing character of its vegetation. ”

“ Their development is supposed to depend on their union with other partially developed cells or gemmules which precede them in the regular course of growth. Why I use the term union, will be seen when we discuss the direct action of pollen on the tissues of the mother-plant. Gemmules are supposed to be thrown off by every cell or unit, not only during the adult state, but during all the stages of development. Lastly, I assume that the gemmules in their dormant state have a mutual affinity for each other, leading to their aggregation either into buds or into the sexual elements. ”

“ In salt marshes along the Atlantic Coast and the Gulf of Mexico, from Maine to Louisiana, the SEA-SIDE GERARDIA (G. maritima) flowers in midsummer, or a few weeks ahead of the autumnal, upland species. The plant, which rarely exceeds a foot in height, is sometimes only four inches above ground; and although at the North the paler magenta blossoms are only about half the length of the purple gerardias, in the South they are sometimes quite as long. ”

“ The genus Geranium differs from Erodium principally in having the stamens all perfect;336 but the alternate ones are longer than the others, and have a gland at the base of each. The seed-pod is said to resemble the head of a crane, and when it bursts, the styles, which are smooth inside, curl up round and round like the coil of a rope. The seeds of many of the kinds are beautifully netted. Many of the species are British weeds, and among the commonest of these may be mentioned Herb Robert (Geranium Robertianum) , and the Meadow Crane’s-bill (G. pratense) . ”

“ This plant, from Dammara Land in S. Africa, is remarkable from being the one known member of the Family which is not a climber; it has been described in ‘Transact. Linn. Soc.,’ xxvii. p. 30.
Geranium rotundifolium (Geraniaceae) .—A single seedling came up accidentally in a pot, and its cotyledons were observed to bend perpendicularly downwards during several successive nights, having been horizontal at noon. It grew into a fine plant but died before flowering: it was sent to Kew and pronounced to be certainly a Geranium, and in all probability the above-named species. ”

“ The larger-flowered species of Geranium are markedly protandrous, the outer stamens, inner stamens and stigmas becoming functional in succession. For instance, in meadow crane’s-bill G. pratense, each whorl of stamens ripens in turn, becoming erect and shedding their pollen; as the anthers wither the filaments bend outwards, and when all the anthers have diverged the stigmas become mature and ready for pollination. ”

“ We may regard the Geraniums as herbs of Europe, and the Pelargoniums as miniature trees of Africa. When we examine the flowers, we find the fine petals of a true Geranium of precisely the same shape and size; but the fine petals of a Pelargonium are not so, for sometimes the topmost are the largest, and stand apart from the rest with great dignity, like mother and father looking down on their dutiful daughters, and in other cases they are the smallest, suggesting that the daughters have grown too fast and become unmanageable. ”

“ Though a beautiful plant it is by no means welcome to the herdsman, for it is not good for fodder. The finely divided leaves are well seen in the photograph. The purple-blue flowers have more of a tinge of red in them when they first open. The Wood Geranium will be recognised by its erect stem, hairy above, leaves which are arranged opposite to one another, purple-violet flowers with petals that are not notched in the middle, and sepals drawn out to a long point. ”

“ With Desmodium gyrans the two lateral leaflets are very much smaller than the corresponding leaflets in most of the species in this large genus; they vary also in position and size; one or both are sometimes absent; and they do not sleep like the fully-developed leaflets. They may therefore be considered as almost rudimentary; and in accordance with the general principles of embryology, they ought to be more constantly and fully developed on very young than on old plants. ”

“ She confided her pitiful history to this new-found friend, [Pg 78] who was so kind and sympathetic that the geranium grew warm and happy. Presently the sun shone out in the murky sky, and immediately the sunbeam glided along his golden thread and rejoined his parent. He did not, however, forsake the plant which had sheltered him, but frequently visited her, so that she forgot her struggle for life, and grew into a fine healthy geranium, much to the delight of her young master. ”

“ Lutisha could have taken that geranium and stuck it in the ground and had something worth looking at in a few weeks. Those people across the alley had no business with one. They set it out and let the hot sun bake it all day and they put it so near the ledge the wind could almost knock it over. They had no business with it, no business with it. It shouldn't have been there. Old Dudley felt his throat knotting up. Lutish could root anything. Rabie too. ”

“ I was scarcely prepared for the tremendous sensation the gerbilles created. Remarks in broad Hertfordshire greeted their appearance. "Whoy, here's a lot of moise."⁠"Noa, they ain't; they's rats!"⁠" Will they boite?" and then such a cluster of children came round me they had to be called to order, and the cage was carried round that all might see the little foreigners, and through all the after-proceedings many pairs of eyes remained fixed upon the cage and its inmates. ”

“ Persoonia produces several new species, which I cannot describe without having recourse to my specimens, and they are not at present within my reach. Grevilleæ abounds in new forms to the north, and the great white Grevilleæ which grows on the sand plain between the Hutt and Murchison, is at least one of the finest species of this extensive genus. I send you five seeds of this magnificent plant ; it grows to be a bushy shrub, five or six feet high, with several flower stalks, six or eight feet high; these terminate in branching racemes of white honey-scented flowers. ”

“ Gertrude flew from the presence of the Lord, for she was already a bird, but her feathers were blackened already, from her mourning; and from that time forward she and her descendants have, all the year round, sought their food between the wood and the bark; but the feathers of their back and wings get more mottled with black as they grow older; and when the white is quite covered the Lord Christ takes them for his own again. ”

“ If he does not edge them with blue lobelia, he edges them with some yellow stuff which I think he calls pyrethrum. One has only to smell it once never to try it again. At the same time there are some super-cultured people who carry the hatred of the geranium to an unreasonable extent. There is a white one which does not make me ill, and a pink one which is not too hideous. ”

“ Gerontius is yet in the body, and the rime, used solemnly, marks a difference—which has a delicate symbolism—between his utterances in the body and his utterances when his soul has left the body. What we call blank verse is used by the Spirit—rime disappears, but the rhythm remains the same. Using verse-notation, we find five accented notes in each line, if we consider the lines at all. There are two quarter-notes in each bar, which may be written as
[12] (p. 25.) Gerontius dreams that he is dying. He has not strength to pray. ”

“ In fact it may be said that, from a popular point of view, the pelargoniums of the botanist are still better known as geraniums than are the geraniums themselves, but the term “zonal Pelargonium” is gradually making its way amongst the masses.
The species of Geranium consist mostly of herbs, of annual or perennial duration, dispersed throughout the temperate regions of the world. They number about 160, and bear a considerable family resemblance. ”

“ The Seed-bud, Shaft, and Summits.
About the year 1794, this species of Geranium was first introduced to the Royal Gardens, Kew, by Mr. Francis Masson, from the Cape of Good Hope. Of all the tuberous kind, this is, certainly, the most specious yet in England; it flowers generally about March, in which month, our drawing was made, from a specimen in the nursery of Mr. J. Colville, King’s Road, Chelsea. Mr. Colville informs us, that the propagation is very difficult, and only to be performed by the root; as the plant does not produce any branches, and that the seeds do not ripen ”