“I was possessor of a garden in which was a Palm Tree, which had every year produced abundance of fruit; but two seasons having passed away without its affording any, I sent for a person well acquainted with the culture of Palm Trees, to discover for me the cause of the failure.
“‘An unhappy attachment,’ observed the man, after a moment’s inspection, ‘is the sole cause why this Palm Tree produces no fruit.’
“He then climbed up the trunk, and looking around, discovered another Palm at no great distance, which he recognized as the object of my unhappy tree’s affection; and he advised me to procure some of the powder from its blossoms and to scatter it over the branches. This I did; and the consequence was my Date Palm, whom unrequited love had kept barren, bore me an abundant harvest.”
FLORAL OFFERINGS IN A MOUNTAIN CATHEDRAL
CHAPTER VII
Art in the Plant World
“As if the rainbows of the fresh mild spring
Had blossomed where they fell.”
The plants are perfect artists. From the budding of the Rose to the sudden shooting forth of the seeds of the Wistaria, everything they do is in perfect taste. Ugly flowers are decidedly uncommon. Those which human judgment declares to be less lovely than their fellows have their attractive points, if we take the trouble to look for them. If art is a desire for beauty, a searching after perfect harmony, then the plants and flowers are the most artistic creatures in the universe.
Plant colours are particularly interesting. The flowers are master-craftsmen when it comes to the adornment of dainty, delicate petals with pigments which are the distilled essence of a thousand rainbows. No other quality in the natural world gives man a deeper emotional enjoyment. Floral colours speak a whole language of their own of which we can get only faint interpretations.
Cold biologists explain that the beautiful hues and shades of plantdom are largely designed to attract insects and so secure a necessary distribution of pollen. There is no doubt that this is true, but for one to believe that this is the sole function of a flower’s beauty is to reduce the world to a materialistic basis and banish all thoughts of the esthetic, the spiritual and the ideal. The flowers are permitted to adorn themselves in bright raiment at least partly in order to satisfy the universal craving for the delicate and the artistic.