Wild Flowers - An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and Their Insect Visitors by Neltje Blanchan
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page 7 of 638 (01%)
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White and Greenish Flowers
Yellow and Orange Flowers Red and Indefinites Appendices: Fragrant Flowers or Leaves Unpleasantly Scented Plants and Shrubs Conspicuous in Fruit Plant Families Represented "Let us content ourselves no longer with being mere 'botanists' - historians of structural facts. The flowers are not mere comely or curious vegetable creations, with colors, odors, petals, stamens and innumerable technical attributes. The wonted insight alike of scientist, philosopher, theologian, and dreamer is now repudiated in the new revelation. Beauty is not 'its own excuse for being,' nor was fragrance ever 'wasted on the desert air.' The seer has at last heard and interpreted the voice in the wilderness. The flower is no longer a simple passive victim in the busy bee's sweet pillage, but rather a conscious being, with hopes, aspirations and companionships. The insect is its counterpart. Its fragrance is but a perfumed whisper of welcome, its color is as the wooing blush and rosy lip, its portals are decked for his coming, and its sweet hospitalities humored to his tarrying; and as it speeds its parting affinity, rests content that its life's consummation has been fulfilled." - William Hamilton Gibson. "I often think, when working over my plants, of what Linnaeus |
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