The same engaging habit is noticeable in the case of some of our very commonest plants. After the golden-rods and asters have had their day, late in October or well into November, when witch-hazel, yarrow, and clover are almost the only blossoms left us, you will stumble here and there upon a solitary [dandelion] reflecting the sun, or a [violet] giving back the color of the sky. And even so, you may find, once in a while, an old man in whom imaginative impulses have sprung up anew, now that all the prosaic activities of middle life are over. It is almost as if he were born again. The song of the April robin, the blossoming of the apple-tree, the splendors of sunset and sunrise,—these and things like them touch him to pleasure, as he now remembers they used to do years and years ago. What means this strange revival of youth in age? Is it a reminiscence merely, a final flickering of the candle, or is it rather a prophecy of life yet to come? Well, with the dandelion and the violet we know with reasonable certainty how the matter stands. The autumnal blooms are not belated, but precocious; they belong not to the season past, but to the season coming. Who shall forbid us to hope that what is true of the violet will prove true also of the man?
It speaks well for human nature that in the long run the lowliest flowers are not only the best loved, but the oftenest spoken of. Men play the cynic: modest merit goes to the wall, they say; whoever would succeed, let him put on a brazen face and sharpen his elbows. But those who talk in this strain deceive neither themselves nor those who listen to them. They are commonly such as have themselves tried the trumpet and elbow method, and have discovered that, whatever may be true of transient notoriety, neither public fame nor private regard is to be won by such means. We do not retract what we have said in praise of diversity, and about the right of each to live according to its own nature, but we gladly perceive that in the case of the flowers also it is the meek that inherit the earth.
Our appreciation of our fellow-men depends in part upon the amount, but still more upon the quality, of the service they render us. We could get along without poets more comfortably than without cobblers, for the lower use is often first, in order both of time and of necessity; but we are never in doubt as to their relative place in our esteem. One serves the body, the other the soul; and we reward the one with money, the other with affection and reverence. And our estimation of plants is according to the same rule. Such of them as nourish the body are good,—good even to the point of being indispensable; but as we make a difference between the barnyard fowl and the nightingale, and between the common run of humanity and a Beethoven or a Milton, so maize and potatoes are never put into the same category with lilies and [violets]. It must be so, because man is more than an animal, and "the life is more than meat."
Again we say, let each fulfill its own function. One is made for utility, another for beauty. For plants, too, are specialists. They know as well as men how to make the most of inherited capacities and aptitudes, achieving distinction at last by the simple process of sticking to one thing, whether that be the production of buds, blossoms, berries, leaves, bark, timber, or what not; and our judgment of them must be correspondingly varied. The vine bears blossoms, but is to be rated not by them, but by the grapes that come after them; and the rose-tree bears hips, but takes its rank not from them, but from the flowers that went to the making of them. "Nothing but leaves" is a verdict unfavorable or otherwise according to its application. The tea-shrub would hold up its head to hear it.
One of the most interesting and suggestive points of difference among plants is that which relates to the matter of self-reliance. Some are made to stand alone, others to twine, and others to creep. If it were allowable to attribute human feelings to them, we should perhaps be safe in assuming that the upright look down upon the climbers, and the climbers in turn upon the creepers; for who of us does not felicitate himself upon his independence, such as it is, or such as he imagines it to be? But if independence is indeed a boon,—and I, for one, am too thoroughbred a New Englander ever to doubt it,—it is not the only good, nor even the highest. The nettle, standing straight and prim, asking no favors of anybody, may rail at the grape-vine, which must lay hold of something, small matter what, by which to steady itself; but the nettle might well be willing to forego somewhat of its self-sufficiency, if by so doing it could bring forth grapes. The [smilax], also, with its thorns, its pugnacious habit, and its stony, juiceless berries, a sort of handsome vixen among vines,—the smilax, which can climb though it cannot stand erect, has little occasion to lord it over the [strawberry]. If one has done nothing, or worse than nothing, it is hardly worth while to boast of the original fashion in which he has gone about it. Moreover, the very plants of which we are speaking bear witness to the fact that it is possible to accept help, and still retain to the full one's own individuality. The strawberry is no more a plagiarist than the smilax, nor the grape than the nettle. If the vine clings to the cedar, the connection is but mechanical. Its spirit and life are as independent of the savin as of the planet Jupiter. Even the [dodder], which not only twines about other weeds, but actually sucks its life from them, does not thereby lose an iota of its native character. If a man is only original to begin with,—so the parable seems to run,—he is under a kind of necessity to remain so (as Shakespeare did), no matter how much help he may draw from alien sources.
This truth of the vegetable world is the more noteworthy, because, along with it there goes a very strong and persistent habit of individual variation. The plant is faithful to the spirit of its inherited law, but is not in bondage to the letter. Our "high-bush [blackberries]," to take a familiar illustration, are all of one species, but it does not follow that they are all exactly alike. So far from it, I knew in my time—and the school-boys of the present day are not less accurately informed, we may presume—where to find berries of all shapes, sizes, and flavors. Some were sour, and some were bitter, and some (I can taste them yet) were finger-shaped and sweet. And what is true of Rubus villosus is probably true of all plants, though in varying degrees. I do not recall a single article of our annual wild crop—blueberries, huckleberries, blackberries, cherries, grapes, pig-nuts (a bad name for a good thing), shagbarks, acorns, and so forth—in which there was not this constant inequality among plants of the same species, perfectly well defined, and never lost sight of by us juvenile connoisseurs. If we failed to find the same true of other vines and bushes, which for our purposes bore blossoms only, the explanation is not far to seek. Our perceptions, æsthetic and gastronomic, were unequally developed. We were in the case of the man to whom a poet is a poet, though he knows very well that there are cooks and cooks.
It is this slight but everywhere present admixture of the personal quality—call it individuality, or what you will—that saves the world, animal and vegetable alike, from stagnation. Every bush, every bird, every man, together with its unmistakable and ineradicable likeness to the parent stock, has received also a something, be it more or less, that distinguishes it from all its fellows. Let our observation be delicate enough, and we shall perceive that there are no duplicates of any kind, the world over. It is part of the very unity of the world, this universally diffused diversity.
It does a sympathetic observer good to see how humanly plants differ in their likes and dislikes. One is catholic: as common people say, it is not particular; it can live and thrive almost anywhere. Another must have precisely such and such conditions, and is to be found, therefore, only in very restricted localities. The Dionæa, or Venus's fly-trap, is a famous example of this fastidiousness, growing in a small district of North Carolina, and, as far as appears, nowhere else,—a highly specialized plant, with no generic relative. Another instance is furnished by a water lily (Nymphæa elegans), the rediscovery of which is chronicled in a late issue of one of our botanical journals. [17] "This lily was originally found in 1849, and has never been seen since, holding its place in botanical literature for these almost forty years on the strength of a single collection at a single vaguely described station on the broad prairies of southwestern Texas;" now, after all this time, it turns up again in another quarter of the same State. And every student could report cases of a similar character, though less striking than these, of course, within the limits of his own local researches. If you ask me where I find dandelions, I answer, anywhere; but if you wish me to show you the sweet colt's-foot (Nardosmia palmata), you must go with me to one particular spot. Any of my neighbors will tell you where the [pink moccasin flower] grows; but if it is the yellow one you are in search of, I shall swear you to secrecy before conducting you to its swampy hiding-place. Some plants, like some people (but the plants, be it noted, are mostly weeds), seem to flourish best away from home; others die under the most careful transplanting. Some are lovers of the open, and cannot be too much in the sun; others lurk in deep woods, under the triple shadow of tree and bush and fern. Some take to sandy hill-tops; others must stand knee-deep in water. One insists upon the richest of meadow loam; another is content with the face of a rock. We may say of them as truly as of ourselves, De gustibus non est disputandum. Otherwise, how would the earth ever be clothed with verdure?