In a now nameless little stream, filling the narrow interval between low hills, till within a few years there grew little but the yellow dock, white arrow-leaf, blue pickerel-weed, and here and there a lily. It was simply a typical muddy brook, such as is found everywhere in the “drift” areas of the State. Every plant was commonplace; but far be it from me to infer that any one was mean or meritless. Not a flower named but is really beautiful; yet, save the lily, none would be gathered for nosegays. Why, as is so common, speak disparagingly of the yellow nuphar, our familiar splatter-dock? Let it be gathered with care, with no fleck of tide-borne mud upon its petals, and see how rich the coloring, and with what grace the flower has been molded. I doubt not, were the nuphar fragrant, it would be extolled as it deserves, as, were the rose fetid, it would be despised. Thus one writer remarks, “From its filthy habits it has been called, with some justice, the frog-lily.” But wherein lies its filthiness it is hard to determine. It has no decided preference for waters too stagnant for its fairer cousin the white nymphæa; and then smirched lilies are no novelties. A pond may be too muddy for even them to preserve their purity, yet they will grow as luxuriantly as their unstained sisters. That the nuphar may remain longer in the polluted waters than will the nymphæa does not argue that it prefers such conditions, and never a frog but loved clean water better than foul. Botanists should not speak slightingly of the animal world; it too has its beauties. And the reference to the frog shows a woful ignorance of that creature.
How many have held the flower-stalk of the arrow-head—a sea-green staff studded with ivory? They, at least, will admit its beauty. Nor will the spike of violet-blue flowers of the pickerel-weed fail to be admired even if gathered; and what flower when torn from its stem but loses grace? No shrub so sprawling but fills its niche fittingly.
Where these native aquatic plants grow they complete the little landscape. Each would be quickly missed were it absent; they are part and parcel of an evolved microcosm, needing nothing. Such was this little creek.
Into the deep mud of the stream, widened here by a dam to a pond of several acres, a single tuber of the Egyptian lotus was placed eight years ago, and the result awaited with much curiosity, if not anxiety. That same year it sprouted and grew luxuriantly. It was soon too prominent a feature of the landscape for its own good—the cows came, saw, and tasted, but did not fatally wound. It withstood the summer’s heat, but would it withstand the winter’s cold? The pond that before was like all other ponds is so no longer. The native growths that seemed so firmly rooted have disappeared, and the lotus has taken all their places—so completely, indeed, that now even the water is shut from view for more than an acre’s space. As the spot is approached from the neighboring hill-top we get a bird’s-eye view, the effect of which is striking and thoroughly un-native, so far as plant life is concerned, and in a measure disappointing. Recall some rainy day in a crowded city when from an upper window you have looked down upon the street. No sidewalk and but little wagon-way to be seen—nothing but a waving expanse of upraised umbrellas. Hence the disappointment, if you have read travelers’ tales of the lotus bloom. But worthier thoughts well up as you draw nearer.
One has but to glance over Gray’s Botany to notice how many plants have been introduced from Europe, and are now so firmly established that native species are forced to retire before them. The pond before me exhibits another, and so recent an instance it has not yet been recorded. What radical changes this Egyptian plant will work are yet to be determined; that we can foresee one of them—the crowding out of the nuphar—is unquestionable. That any change will be one to be regretted is highly improbable. To introduce the lotus is not to repeat the blunder of the English sparrow. It is certain not to oust other plants that are more valuable, for as yet we have found little if any value in the products of our marshes. Since the country’s settlement it has been the aim of the thrifty to convert them into dry land whenever practicable. Thanks to whomsoever thanks are due, many are irreclaimable.
Seeing how forcibly this wonderful flower of the lotus impresses itself upon the minds of the ancient Egyptians and the East generally, how prominently it figures in Eastern religions—“all idols of Buddha are made to rest upon opened lotus-flowers”—it is safe to conclude that when familiar to all, even in this utilitarian age, it will not be merely ranked as one of many flowering plants; it is of too commanding an appearance for this, and to literature will prove a boon. Asters, golden-rods, and buttercups can have a well-earned rest.
Years ago the cultivation of the American species proved a failure, and those who are now best capable of judging still record the curious fact that the native lotus is much more difficult to establish in our waters than the Eastern, and does not grow with quite the same luxuriance. Its introduction by the aborigines along our Eastern seaboard has been mentioned; perhaps it has lost vigor since it lost their care, and has disappeared excepting where its environment was peculiarly favorable. And the question arises, after all, Is it in the strict sense a native? May it not, indeed, have been brought hither in prehistoric times? The question of a superlatively ancient communication between the continents is a tempting subject for study, and how appropriate when resting in the shade of the Eastern lotus! Such a train of thought need not stir up any ghost of a mythical lost Atlantis. Still, the American form has certain marked peculiarities. The mature torus has a decided constriction some distance from the insertion of the stem, wanting in the foreign species, and the seeds of the former are globular instead of distinctly oval. Whatever the history of the American form, that of the Eastern, or Egyptian, as it is usually called, is too well known to need repeating, however briefly, and yet the plant is still wrapped in mystery. A word, however, concerning the term Egyptian in connection with it. At present it is a plant of India, of China and Japan, Australia, the Malay Archipelago, and the Caspian Sea—an enormous range; but it is no longer found in the valley of the Nile. The use of the name rests upon the fact that it was once there, not only a cultivated plant, but held sacred by the people of that country, as it is by the Hindoos. Egyptologists, however, are not of one mind as to the relation of the lotus to the antiquities of the Nile region, some questioning the matter altogether, and considering the sculpturing to represent the lily of the Nile, one of the grandest of the white nymphæas. Quite recently, too, it has been ably argued to be the renowned rose of Sharon. “Of such a kingly flower Solomon might well have said, ‘I am the rose of Sharon.’”
Perhaps we should be contented with our splendid native flora, but surely there is room in waste places, our unappreciated marshes and mud-holes, for the lotus—
“a flower delicious as the rose,
And stately as the lily in her pride.”