Male flower

“ The long stems are clothed with large and handsome pinnate leaves, and the yellowish-green inflorescence appears towards the end of summer. The male plant has long been known as a very strong, graceful, and effective herb. The female plant, however, remains green much longer than the male, and when profusely laden with fruit, each shoot droops and the whole plant improves in aspect. It should not be forgotten in any selection of hardy plants of free growth and imposing aspect. ”

“ One male and one female inhabit each flower. It is brought from between the tropics to our hot-houses, and bears a beautiful crimson flower; the seeds are used as shot by the Indians, and are strung for prayer-beads in some catholic countries. ”

“ Fortunately the ugly and inconspicuous female flowers grow on the lower whorls, while the male ones, with their snowy petals and golden centres, are arranged about the upper part of the scape, where the eye first falls. ”

“ Can words describe the fragrance of the very breath of spring--that delicious commingling of the perfume of arbutus, the odor of pines, and the snow-soaked soil just warming into life? Those who know the flower only as it is sold in the city streets, tied with wet, dirty string into tight bunches, withered and forlorn, can have little idea of the joy of finding the pink, pearly blossoms freshly opened among the withered leaves of oak and chestnut, moss and pine needles in which they nestle close to the cold earth in the leafless, windy northern forest. ”

“ I forsook human life for floral, and in my renouncing I gained much. In my garden there grew a single fragile flower, orchid-like in glory, but of a species quite different to any I had ever chanced upon before. ”

“ The Plum blossom (Ume no hana) is masculine, but it typifies spiritual strength and beauty. If we translate this into courage, it sounds like a more manly characteristic. Of all the flowers of this flowery land it is the one most often referred to in poetry, one might well say the best loved. With its delicate petals, white as snowflakes, rosy as a child’s cheeks, deep red as a woman’s mouth, it seemed the last flower to place as the foremost of the ‘Four Floral Gentlemen,’ to liken to the sturdy qualities of a man, but as I looked longer I saw the subtle comparison. ”

“ Fill a tall jar with spires of larkspur of the purest blue known to garden flowers. Unless the sun shines fully on them they seem to swallow light; mingle with them some stalks of white foxgloves, Canterbury bells, or surround them with Madonna lilies, a fringe of spirea, or the slender Deutzia gracilis, more frequently seen in florists' windows than in the garden, [Pg 354] and a new meaning is given the blue flower; the black shadows disappear from its depth and sky reflections replace them. ”

“ To think that a plant related on one side to many of the loveliest flowers in Nature's garden- - the azaleas, laurels, rhododendrons, and the bonny heather - and on the other side to the modest but no less charming wintergreen tribe, should have fallen from grace to such a depth! Its scientific name, meaning a flower once turned, describes it during only a part of its career. When the minute, innumerable seeds begin to form, it proudly raises its head erect, as if conscious that it had performed the one righteous act of its life. ”

“ No one could write "blown-plants, honey-flowing" without a deep and sophisticated love of flowers.
Every Anglo-Saxon gentleman had a garth, or garden, for pleasure, and an ort-garth for vegetables. [Pg 7] In the garth the best loved flower was the lily, which blossomed beside the rose, sunflower, marigold, gilliflower, violet, periwinkle, honeysuckle, daisy, peony, and bay-tree. ”

“ There are white varieties of almost every garden flower that blooms between the last frost of spring and winter ice. The snowdrop of course is white and the tiny little single English violet of brief though unsurpassing fragrance; we have white crocuses, white hyacinths, narcissus, lilies-of-the-valley, Iris, white rock phlox, or moss-pink, Madonna and Japan lilies, gladiolus, white campanulas of many species, besides the well-known Canterbury bells, white hollyhocks, larkspurs, sweet Sultan, poppies, phloxes, and white annual as well as hardy chrysanthemums. ”

“ For it is as friends, not garden captives or herbarium specimens, that the flower-lover desires to be acquainted with flowers. It is not their uses that attract him; that is the business of the herbalist. Nor is it their structure and analysis; the botanist will see to that. What he craves is a knowledge of the loveliness, the actual life and character of plants in their relation to man—what may be called the spiritual aspect of flowers—and this is seen and felt much more closely when they are sought in their free wild state than when they are cultivated on rockery or in parterre. ”

“ Not a scowling, sullen endurance, not a despairing, hand-dropping resignation, but a heart cheerfulness that holds on to every leaf, and twig, and flower, and bravely smiles and keeps green when frozen to the very heart, knowing that the winter is but for a season, and that the sunshine and bird singings shall return, and the last year's dry flower stalk give place to the risen, glorified flower. ”

“ Some of them watch above the flower-roots, and keep them fresh and strong; others gather the clear drops that trickle from the damp rocks, and form a little spring, which, growing ever larger, rises to the light above, and gushes forth in some green field or lonely forest; where the wild-birds come to drink, and wood-flowers spread their thirsty leaves above the clear, cool waves, as they go dancing away, carrying joy and freshness wherever they go. Others shape the bright jewels into lovely forms, and make the good-luck pennies which we give to mortals whom we love. ”

“ I said that nothing grew on the trellises by the poplars but crimson roses, but I was not quite right, for in many places the wild flowers had crept into the garden from without; lush green briony, with green-white blossoms, that grows p. 5so fast, one could almost think that we see it grow, and deadly nightshade, La bella donna, O! so beautiful; red berry, and purple, yellow-spiked flower, and deadly, cruel-looking, dark green leaf, all growing together in the glorious days of early autumn. ”

“ The flower struggles up from seed-pod, draws the sweet sap from the ground, folds its petals each night, and sleeps. Then love comes to it in a strange form, and it longs to mingle its pollen with the pollen of some other flower. ”

“ Only this delicate little flower, as white as the snow it sometimes must push through to reach the sunshine melting the last drifts in the leafless woods, can be said to wake the robins into song; a full chorus of feathered love-makers greets the appearance of the more widely distributed, and therefore better known, species. ”

“ Every flower show has some new and more beautiful rose or chrysanthemum; every new spring seed catalogue its new colorings of sweet peas and nasturtiums. Any little boy or girl with a tiny garden, can watch for some flower with a poet's gift for size, color or perfume, and help it "come up higher." ”

“ The strong shoots of last year will produce a large cluster of flowers from almost every eye, and as a profuse flowering double white climbing rose we have seen none to surpass it. It grows freely, the foliage and wood pure green, leaves much nerved. ”

“ Every shade in foliage, and every hue and odour in flower will charm him: the delicacy of the plane sets off the polished darkness of the oleander and myrtle leaf, the moist glitter of the maidenhair enriches the ferns that spread themselves like fans upon the rocks, and along the vine-branches the shooting leaves begin to uncurl. ”

“ A summer's day finds it withered ere noon; and each morning decks it with new blossoms, to bask a few brief hours in the sunshine, then shrivel, fall, and pass away. But it would ill become me to disparage the beauty of this fair and favourite flower; the great profusion and luxuriance of its blossoms amply compensating for their short-lived beauty; and when many stems are intertwined, the variety of colour is extremely gay and ornamental. ”

“ The rose, the jessamine, the violet, the narcissus, the hyacinth, the anemone, the tulip, the ranunculus, the carnation, the lily, and an infinity of other flowers, which in other places bloom at various times, come all into flower at once in this spot; and nothing can be softer than the air you breathe in this garden. ”

“ The still more exquisite sweetness of orange blossoms is wafted towards us, as a gipsy flower-girl passes through the groups, carrying many a mysterious bouquet, of which the flowers tell a perhaps too sweet and too dangerous love-tale to the fair receiver. ”

“ The man knows about his crops and his wife about the flowers, herbs, and vegetables of her garden; but no countrymen know the names of wild flowers—and few countrywomen, save of medicinal herbs. I asked one farmer the name of a brilliant autumnal flower whose intense purple was then unfamiliar to me—the Devil's-bit. He answered, "Them's Woilets." Violet is the only word in which the initial V is ever changed to W by native New Englanders. Every pink or crimson flower is a Pink. Spring blossoms are "Mayflowers." A frequent answer is, "Those ain't flowers, they're weeds." ”

“ Later in the season, we become critical—we reject the full-blown flower for the half-open bud, but just now we are eager to feast our eyes upon a rose—a true, perfect rose—with all her beauties opening to the light, all her silken petals unfolding in rich profusion about her fragrant heart. ”

“ How strangely beautiful it is to see flowers of the gayest hues dancing in the light breeze, and flinging round their young perfume over the lingering death-bed of a thing of centuries!—The Wallflower, the Clove Pink, and the Snap-dragon, especially, may be seen growing in the most luxuriant profusion amid such spots, and literally making a garden of a grave. ”

“ Every now and again one would settle on a flowering shrub with crimson blossoms, and dip its curved long beak into the cup and suck out the honey. The male of this species is ornamented with a long tail, the female being much plainer. In the brute creation it is always so; the male tries to captivate by ornaments and brilliant colours. ”

“ It is shrub and flower; the frailty of its blossoms, the down of its waxy leaves, the balm of its fragrance, are so unlike the glancing foliage of other shrubs—the hot-house forms, the dyer tints, and perfumer scent of other flowers,—that it makes them look children of art and care: wild and tender, it is to other flowers as a shepherdess among women, and to other shrubs as an Arab among the races of men. ”

“ In the fields, orchards, and gardens, white flowers, yellow flowers, red flowers were common; but blue flowers were rare and retiring, as if they guarded a secret which men should come and search out. ”

“ But the sight of that glorious plant rising proudly from amidst the greenery of its forest setting will be for us more than any picture. And its being "wild" has the same fascination for us that a flower that is "wild," and not garden grown, has for a child. In a florist's shop we may see lilies even more beautiful than this, but the enjoyment we get from seeing the florist's production bears no comparison whatever with the enjoyment we get from seeing this lily in a distant Himalayan forest where not so many white men ever go. We often have experiences which perceptibly age us. ”

“ The imposing flower cluster is borne at the top of the stalk and is about a foot long, broad at the base and tapering to a blunt point, and composed of hundreds of fragrant, cream-white flowers, each about half an inch across, with slender, white pedicels, and so closely crowded together that the effect is very solid, yet made feathery by the long stamens. It is a fine sight to come across a company of these noble plants in a mountain meadow, rearing their great shafts of bloom far above their neighbors. ”

“ The third new word you must know the meaning of, is PETALS. Nearly every flower has petals. They are the beautiful coloured leaves of the flower that are within the calyx. It is these lovely petals, pink in the rose, yellow in the buttercup, red in the poppy, and blue in the forget-me-not, that most of us mean when we talk of flowers, and it is these soft, silky petals which attract us, and not us only, but the birds and the bees and the butterflies, which all visit the gay flowers. These petals are among the most beautiful things in this wonderful world. ”

“ There are many flowers in the forest; marigolds, a white jonquil-looking flower without smell, many orchids, white, yellow, and pink asclepias, with bunches of French-white flowers, clematis--_Methonica gloriosa_, gladiolus, and blue and deep purple polygalas, grasses with white starry seed-vessels, and spikelets of brownish red and yellow. Besides these, there are beautiful blue flowering bulbs, and new flowers of pretty, delicate form and but little scent. To this list may be added balsams, composite of blood-red color and of purple ”

“ Following this natural guidance he may scramble around the base of the rocks, or along their transverse ledges, and feast his eyes on the many mountain flowers that are within sight, if not within reach.
It is a fine sport, this flower-gazing; not only because all the plants are beautiful and many of them rare, but because it demands a certain skill to balance oneself on a steep declivity, while looking upward, through binoculars, at some attractive clump of purple saxifrage, or moss-campion, or thrift, or rose-root, or globe-flower, as the case may be. ”

“ A newly opened flower has its stigma erected where the incoming bee must leave on its sticky surface the four minute orange-like grains carried from the anther of another flower on the hairy underside of her body. Now, each anther is tucked away in one of the ten little pockets of the saucer-shaped blossom, and the elastic filaments are strained upward like a bow. ”