Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers by John Ruskin
page 71 of 120 (59%)
page 71 of 120 (59%)
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the large Cape varieties, in all of which, judging from such plates as have
been accessible to me, the crests or fringes of the lower petal are less conspicuous than in the smaller species; and the flower almost takes the aspect of a broom-blossom or pease-blossom. In the smaller European varieties, the white fringes of the lower petal are the most important and characteristic part of the flower, and they are, among European wild flowers, absolutely without any likeness of associated structure. The fringes or crests which, towards the origin of petals, so often give a frosted or gemmed appearance to the centres of flowers, are here thrown to the extremity of the petal, and suggest an almost coralline structure of blossom, which in no other instance whatever has been imitated, still less carried out into its conceivable varieties of form. How many such varieties might have been produced if these fringes of the Giulietta, or those already alluded to of Lucia nivea, had been repeated and enlarged; as the type, once adopted for complex bloom in the thistle-head, is multiplied in the innumerable gradations of thistle, teasel, hawkweed, and aster! We might have had flowers edged with lace finer than was ever woven by mortal fingers, or tasselled and braided with fretwork of silver, never tarnished--or hoarfrost that grew brighter in the sun. But it was not to be, and after a few hints of what might be done in this kind, the Fate, or Folly, or, on recent theories, the extreme fitness--and consequent survival, of the Thistles and Dandelions, entirely drives the fringed Lucias and blue-flushing milkworts out of common human neighbourhood, to live recluse lives with the memories of the abbots of Cluny, and pastors of Piedmont. 12. I have called the Giulietta 'blue-_flushing_' because it is one of the group of exquisite flowers which at the time of their own blossoming, breathe their colour into the surrounding leaves and supporting stem. Very notably the Grape hyacinth and Jura hyacinth, and some of the Vestals, |
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