Wild plant

“ A valuable quality of the plant is, that in any light soil it spreads freely, and it is quite hardy. For dry places between shrubs, for dry or sandy banks (either wooded or bare) , copses, or heathy places, this plant is admirable. I have noticed it thriving in the shade of fir trees. It is interesting as being a South American plant, thriving in any open soil.
Marsh Mallow, Althæa.—These are plants rarely seen out of botanic gardens now–a–days, and yet, from their vigour and showy flowers, they may afford unique effects in the wild garden. ”

“ There are many countries with winters as cold as, or colder than, our own, possessing a rich flora; and by taking the best hardy exotics and establishing them in wild or half–wild spots, we may produce beautiful pictures in such places. To most people a pretty plant in a free state is more attractive than any garden denizen. It is taking care of itself; and, moreover, it is usually surrounded by some degree of graceful wild spray—the green above, and the moss and brambles and grass around. ”

“ The Wild Roses, Purple Vetch, Honeysuckle, and the Virgin’s Bower, clamber above smaller, but not less pretty, wildlings, and throw a veil of graceful life over the mutilated shrubs, reminding us of the plant–life in the nest–like thickets of dwarf shrubs that one often meets on the high Alpine meadows. ”

“ And first, in the security bred of many harmless marriages, it had been forgotten that Love is no hot-house flower, but a wild plant, born of a wet night, born of an hour of sunshine; sprung from wild seed, blown along the road by a wild wind. A wild plant that, when it blooms by chance within the hedge of our gardens, we call a flower; and when it blooms outside we call a weed; but, flower or weed, whose scent and colour are always, wild! ”

“ All the species flourish under cultivation, and become very ornamental early border flowers; but care should be taken to plant them in rich black vegetable mould, the native soil of their forest haunts. ”

“ You see the point, do you not? If you wish wild flowers to grow in a tame garden make them feel at home. Cheat them into almost believing that they are still in their native haunts.
"Wild flowers ought to be transplanted after blossoming time is over. Take a trowel and a basket into the woods with you. As you take up a few, a columbine, or a hepatica, be sure to take with the roots some of the plant's own soil, which must be packed about it when replanted.
"The bed into which these plants are to go should be prepared carefully before this trip of yours. ”

“ Living mostly by the chase and on a few wild fruits picked from the forest these half-wild and savage people wandered wherever game was plentiful and the continental glacier would permit. But there came a day when one of these races began the cultivation of some of the wild plants about them and with that day dawned the real beginning of man’s use of plants. And with that day also these simplest of our ancestors stopped their wanderings in large part and became farmers, albeit very crude ones, as their primitive stone implements show. ”

“ Not varying very much in character, all obtainable hardy species would group well together. The most vigorous kind at present in cultivation is one called A. latifolius, almost evergreen, and a fine plant when well established. Few plants are more fitted for adorning wild and semi–wild places, as they grow and increase without care, and are for foliage or bloom unsurpassed by any of the numerous plants that have been so long neglected through their not being available in any popular system of “flower gardening.”ill121 ”

“ In fact there are in natural wild plants great differences between individuals, and when such plants are cultivated in good soil, where they have far more to eat than they require, the result is that they produce extraordinary and monstrous types. ”

“ And in the woods at this season you find the yellow adder’s tongue, spring beauty, anemone, wake-robin, Jack-in-the-pulpit, wild ginger, and Solomon’s seal. Each of these plants has stores of food hidden in its [Pg 217] underground stem. This may take the shape of a bulb, or a tuber, or a rootstock; but in any case it shows you at once that it is a little storehouse of food.
A collection of the different kinds of underground stems which serve as storehouses for the early-flowering plants would be quite as interesting to work over as a collection of plant packages. ”

“ The main thing for growers to keep in mind is that it is the wild or natural flavor that is wanted. To attain this see that the roots are treated similar to those growing wild. To do this, prepare beds of soil from the woods where the plants grow, make shade about as the trees in the forests shade the plants, and in the fall see that the beds are covered with leaves. Study the nature of the plant as it grows wild in the forest and make your "cultivated" plants "wild" by giving them the same conditions as if they were growing wild in the forest. ”

“ No garden water, however, should be without a few fine plants or groups of the Water Lily. Where the bottom does not allow of the free development of the plant, earth might be accumulated in the spot where it was desired to encourage the growth of the Nymphæa. ”

“ Another plant of the order is so suitable and useful for this purpose, that if a root or two of it be planted in any shrubbery, it will soon run about, exterminate the weeds, and prove quite a lesson in wild gardening. ”

“ Naturally true double flowers are almost unknown in wild plants, and the habit seems to have been brought about by too easy a time of it, too little struggle, too much food, or by any other of those things that produce effete but beautiful things, charming in their way, but of no significance in the sturdy struggle for existence that all wild plants must meet or perish. ”

“ In our familiar wild flowers, for instance, the young plant, at an early stage of its existence, while it is still minute, becomes covered with a coat often of very resistant qualities, and is then cast loose by the parent in the form of seed, mostly in great numbers, to achieve what travels it can before it takes root and settles down, like its parent before it, to a humdrum existence. ”

“ In some cases, as in the last, these materials are harvested as they occur in the wild state,{147} but in the majority of instances the plants are not merely conserved, but cultivated; cultivation has led to selection of the best varieties; and continued selection has resulted in the production of forms often very different in appearance from the wild plants from which they originated. ”

“ Before we trespass on the domains of arboriculture, horticulture, or agriculture, under which heads the cultivation of useful or ornamental plants divides itself, some consideration is required of those plants which, quasi-wild, are usually included in accounts of the vegetation under the head of aliens, denizens, colonists, and so forth. ”

“ When fruits and seeds are ripe the winds blow them abroad, the birds eat them, fly far away, north and south, sometimes hundreds of miles, and plant the seeds in other countries. In this way plants were scattered long before men began to grow them for food. The soil and rain and sunshine were not always the same, so plants had to change. Many varieties of palms and pines, grasses and wild fruits were made. The plants that traveled and had the greatest number of visitors, changed the most. ”

“ This is quite effective, with attractive flowers and foliage, growing among rocks on hillsides and forming large clumps over a foot high. The stems are slender and often much bent, the leaves are dark green and thin in texture with toothed edges, rolled back, and the numerous flowers are an inch across, with bright yellow rays and deep yellow centers. This plant blossoms both as an annual and as a perennial. ”

“ Tying up or training such a plant is out of the question; but there are many rough places in the wild garden where it would be quite at home and form an attractive feature. Every kind of Everlasting Pea is excellent for the wild garden, either for scrambling over hedgerows, stumps, or growing among the grass.—J. W.ill148
Everlasting Pea, creeping up stem in shrubbery. ”

“ Ornamental plants, or those commonly cultivated in flower gardens, will not stock the school gardens contemplated by the committee. Native wild plants, such as ferns, grasses, asters, goldenrods, violets, native shrubs, and economic plants, such as grains, vegetable roots, and leguminous and cucurbitaceous plants, must be the stock of the gardens. ”

“ Berries have their seeds dropped afar by birds. Aquatic plants and those that grow beside running water travel by river and flood. European species reach our shores among the ballast. Darwin raised over sixty wild plants from seed carried in a pellet of mud taken from the leg of a partridge. So on and so on. The imagination delights to picture these floral vagabonds, each with its own clever method of getting a fresh start in the world. But by none of these methods just mentioned do the tick-trefoils spread abroad. ”

“ This work is not the proper place to show that wild plants of the same species, naturally growing at different altitudes or under different latitudes, become to a certain extent acclimatised, as is proved by the different behaviour of their seedlings when raised in another country. ”

“ The foliage glistens with a strange dew, that all day long drips on to the ground below, nurturing a rank growth of grasses, which shoot up in places so high that their spikes of fierce blood-fed green show far up among the deep-tinted foliage of the terrible tree, and, like a jealous body-guard, keep concealed the fearful secret of the charnel-house within, and draw round the black roots of the murderous plant a decent screen of living green. ”

“ Now, such beauty could be obtained without any further aid from other plants; and in many cases it might be desirable to consider the trees and shrubs and their effect only, and let the turf spread in among them; but we have the privilege of adding to this beautiful tree and shrub life another world of beauty—the bulbs and herbaceous plants, and innumerable beautiful things which go to form the ground flora, so to say, of northern and temperate countries, and which light up the world with loveliness in meadow or copse, or wood or alpine pasture in the flowering season. ”

“ There are several species hardy and well suited for flower-garden purposes, and, more advantageous still, distinct from each other. The effect afforded by them, when well developed, is equal to that of any hothouse plant that we can venture in the open air for the summer, while they are green and ornamental at all seasons. ”

“ In nearly all our gardens we have a great deal of surface wholly wasted—wide spaces in the shrubbery frequently dug over in the winter, plantations, grass–walks, hedgerows, rough banks, slopes, etc., which hitherto have grown only grass and weeds, and on these a rich garden flora may be grown. Hundreds of the more vigorous and handsome herbaceous plants that exist will thrive in these places and do further good in exterminating weeds and preventing the need of digging. ”

“ On the marshes you are greater and more important than the plants. In an orchard or a giant-tree forest, you feel second-rate someway. The fruit-trees have men for servants, while to the giant trees with their outlook from a height of three hundred feet and their memories of two thousand years, a man is no more than an ant. But in the marshes you feel that you are much more important a kind of creature than the pickle-weed, and that is almost the only plant that grows there. ”

“ Towering above the surrounding vegetation of low-lying meadows, this vigorous composite spreads clusters of soft, fringy bloom that, however deep or pale of tint, are ever conspicuous advertisements, even when the golden-rods, sunflowers, and asters enter into close competition for insect trade. ”

“ They are a change and relief, in their soothing monotony and simple plant life, from the lush and variegated flower fields, the dense and hostile chaparral thickets, the dark forests of great trees, and the miles of artificial plantations of orchards and vines. ”

“ And yet, to the true lover of Nature, wild flowers have a charm which no garden can equal. Cultivated plants are but a living herbarium. They surpass, no doubt, the dried specimens of a museum; but, lovely as they are, they can be no more compared with the natural vegetation of our woods and fields, than the captives in the Zoological Gardens with the same wild species in their native forests and mountains. ”

“ Meadow Rue, Thalictrum.—Tall and vigorous herbaceous plants, mostly without any beauty of flower when closely examined, but often affording a pleasing distant effect when seen in masses, and hence desirable for this mode of gardening, though seldom suitable for a position in the garden proper. They grow in any soil, and should be placed among rank herbs and coarse vegetation, not in the foreground, which might be occupied by more brilliant subjects. ”

“ Not content with filling their hands with flowers, they fill their arms and even their carriage, if they have one. Moreover, the hold of the plant on the light, sandy soil is very slight; and the careless gatherer, not provided with knife or scissors, will almost invariably pull the root with the flower, thus totally annihilating that plant. ”

“ When it is considered that all the species will grow anywhere—in any hedgerow or lane or byeway, or among coarse grass, or in a copse, or under the shrubs, in places usually abandoned to common weeds, there is no reason why numbers of them should not be rescued from the oblivion of the botanic garden. ”