the petals of the early roses are falling; the elder-blossoms show white along the fence rows; and the season waxes to its prime.
"A wild flower of English fields, the columbine was early transferred into English gardens and has held its place securely there for at least five hundred years. Its seeds were among the treasures borne over the sea to the New World and it early bloomed in Pilgrim gardens. This primitive stock still persists in cultivation.
"The flower of the columbine is a unique and interesting form. The sepals look like petals and the petals are veritable horns of plenty filled with nectar at the closed ends for the swarms of bees which gather about. The sweets are produced by the blossoms on a generous scale, and to a columbine bed in full bloom the bees come, big and little, noisy and silent—all giddy with the feast. There is no use trying to drive them away for they will not go. Clumsy bumble bees with tongues long enough to reach the honey by the open door, wise honey bees who have learned to take the short road to the nectar by biting through the spur, quiet brown bees, little green carpenters—all are there, 'vehement, voluble, velvety,' in a glorious riot of happiness and honey.
"The doubling occurs chiefly with the petals; the sepals, as a rule, hold true to the five, but the petals sometimes double in number, becoming ten spurs in place of five, and each spur becomes a nest of spurs like a set of Chinese cups, though the innermost are frequently imperfect."
The columbine frequently appears in the paintings of the Great Masters. Luini has immortalized it in his picture of this title now in the gallery of the Hermitage at Petrograd. A fascinating woman with a smile as enchanting—if not so famous—as Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" holds an exquisitely painted columbine in her left hand and gazes at it with tender, loving emotion.
The early Italian and Flemish painters include the columbine with the rose, lily, pink, violet, strawberry, and clover in the gardens where the Madonna sits with the Holy Child. The reason that the columbine was chosen as a flower of religious symbolism was because of the little doves formed by the five petals. The columbine signified the "Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit," and the Flemish painters in their zeal for accuracy corrected the number of petals to seven to make the flower agree with the teaching of the Church.
Yet although the columbine has these religious associations, we always think of it as an airy, piquant flower, the gay and irresponsible dancer of the rocks and dells, clad, as it were, in fantastic and parti-colored dress. Graceful in form and charming in color, put together with extreme delicacy on slender, flexible, fragile stems and adorned with a leaf approaching that of the fern in delicacy and lace-like beauty, the columbine is one of the most delightful of flowers. Always associated with folly, we love it none the less for that, for there are times when we enjoy Harlequin and Columbine among our flowers,—and these fantastic and frivolous columbines dancing so gaily in the breeze always fill us with delight.
BROOM (Cytisus scoparius). Although the broom was a popular plant in Elizabethan days it is only mentioned once by Shakespeare. In "The Tempest,"[48] where Iris in the mask in her apostrophe to "Ceres, most bounteous lady," speaks of
thy broom-groves
Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves,
Being lass-lorn ...
... the queen o' the sky ...
Bids thee leave these.