As for reprobates like the so-called "poison ivy" and "poison dogwood," they have perhaps borrowed a familiar human maxim,—"All is fair in war." In any case, they are no worse than savage heathen, who kill their enemies with poisoned arrows, or than civilized Christians, who stab the reputation of their friends with poisoned words. Their marked comeliness of habit may be taken as a point in their favor; or, on the contrary, it may be held to make their case only so much the blacker, by laying them liable to the additional charge of hypocrisy. The question is a nice one, and I gladly leave it for subtler casuists than I to settle.
How refreshing to turn from all these, from the thistle and the bramble, yea, even from the rose itself, to gentle spirits like the [violet] and anemone, the arbutus and hepatica! These wage no war. They are of the original Society of Friends. Who will may spoil them without hurt. Their defense is with their Maker. I wonder whether anybody ever thinks of such flowers as representative of any order of grown people, or whether to everybody else they are forever children, as I find, on thinking of it, they have always been to me. Lowly and trustful, sweet and frail, "of such is the kingdom of heaven." They pass away without losing their innocence. Ere the first heats of summer they are gone.
Yet the [autumn], too, has its delicate blooms, though they are overshadowed and, as it were, put out of countenance by the coarser growths which must be said to characterize the harvest season. Nothing that May puts into her lap is more exquisite than 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 lady to whom I had brought a handful the other day expressed it well when she said, "They look like fairy flowers." They are of my mind in this: they love a dry, sunny opening in the woods, or a grassy field on the edge of woods, especially if there be a seldom-used path running through it. I know not with what human beings to compare them. Perhaps their antitypes of our own kind are yet to be evolved. But I have before now seen a woman who might worthily be set in their company,—a person whose sweet and wise actions were so gracefully carried and so easily let fall as to suggest an order and quality of goodness quite out of relation to common flesh and blood.
What a contrast between such lowly-minded, unobtrusive beauties and egotists like our multitudinous [asters] and [golden-rods]! These, between them, almost take possession of the world for the two or three months of their reign. They are handsome, and they know it. What is beauty for, if not to be admired? They mass their tiny blossoms first into solid heads, then into panicles and racemes, and have no idea of hiding their constellated brightness under a bushel. "Let your light shine!" is the word they go on. How eagerly they crowd along the roadside, till the casual passer-by can see scarce anything else! If he does not see them, it is not their fault.
For myself, I am far from wishing them at all less numerous, or a jot less forward in displaying their charms. Let there be variety, I say. Because I speak well of the violet for its humility, I see no reason why I should quarrel with the aster for loving to make a show. Herein, too, plants are like men. An indisposition toward publicity is amiable in those to whom it is natural; but I am not clear that bashfulness is the only commendable quality. Let plants and men alike carry themselves according to their birthright. Providence has not ordained a diversity of gifts for nothing, and it is only a narrow philosophy that takes offense at seeming contrarieties. The truer method, and the happier as well, is to like each according to its kind: to love that which is amiable, to admire that which is admirable, and to study that which is curious.
A few weeks ago, for example, I walked again up the mountain road that climbs out of the Franconia Valley into the Franconia Notch. I had left home twenty-four hours before, fresh from working upon the asters and [golden-rods] (trying to straighten out my local catalogue in accordance with Dr. Gray's more recent classification of these large and difficult genera), and naturally enough had asters and golden-rods still in my eye. The first mile or two afforded nothing of particular note, but by and by I came to a cluster of the sturdy and peculiar Solidago squarrosa, and was taking an admiring account of its appearance and manner of growth, when I caught sight of some lower blue flower underneath, which on a second glance proved to be the closed gentian. This grew in hiding, as one might say, in the shadow of its taller and showier neighbors. Not far off, but a little more within the wood, were patches of the [linnæa], which had been at its prettiest in June, but even now, in late September, was still putting forth scattered blossoms. What should a man do? Discard the golden-rod for the gentian, and in turn forsake the gentian for the twin-flower? Nay, a child might do that, but not a man; for the three were all beautiful and all interesting, and each the more beautiful and interesting for its unlikeness to the others. If one wishes a stiff lesson in classification, there are few harder genera (among flowering plants) than Solidago; if he would investigate the timely and taking question of the dependence of plants upon insects, this humble "proterandrous" gentian (which to human vision seems closed, but which the humble-bee knows well how to enter) offers him a favorable subject; while if he has an eye for beauty, a nose for delicate fragrance, and a soul for poetry, the linnæa will never cease to be one of his prime favorites. So I say again, let us have variety. It would be a stupid town all whose inhabitants should be of identical tastes and habits, though these were of the very best; and it would be a tiresome country that brought forth only a single kind of plants.
The flower of Linnæus is a flower by itself, as here and there appears a man who seems, as we say, sui generis. This familiar phrase, by the bye, is literally applicable to Linnæa borealis, a plant that spreads over a large part of the northern hemisphere, but everywhere preserves its own specific character; so that, whether it be found in Greenland or in Maryland, on the Alaskan Islands or in Utah, in Siberia or on the mountains of Scotland, it is always and everywhere the same,—a genus of one species. Diversities of soil and climate make no impression upon its originality. If it live at all, it must live according to its own plan.
The [aster], on the contrary, has a special talent for variation. Like some individuals of another sort, it is born to adapt itself to circumstances. Dr. Gray enumerates no less than one hundred and ninety-six North American species and varieties, many of which shade into each other with such endless and well-nigh insensible gradations that even our great special student of the Compositæ pronounces the accurate and final classification of this particular genus a labor beyond his powers. What shall we say of this habit of variability? Is it a mark of strength or of weakness? Which is nobler,—to be true to one's ideal in spite of circumstances, or to conquer circumstances by suiting one's self to them? Who shall decide? Enough that the twin-flower and the star-flower each obeys its own law, and in so doing contributes each its own part toward making this world the place of diversified beauty which it was foreordained to be.
I spoke of the linnæa's autumnal blossoms, though its normal flowering time is in June. Even this steady-going, unimpressible citizen of the world, it appears, has its one bit of freakishness. In these bright, summery September days, when the trees put on their glory, this lowliest member of the honeysuckle family feels a stirring within to make itself beautiful; and being an evergreen (instead of a summer-green), and therefore incapable of bedecking itself after the maple's manner, it sends up a few flower-stems, each with its couple of swinging, fragrant bells. So it bids the world good-by till the long winter once more comes and goes.