. Our garden flowers; a popular study of their native lands, their life histories, and their structural affiliations. Flowers. PARSLEY FAMILY. Sea Holly is a misnomer. One species, Eryngium maritimum, growing on English beaches, attracted attention, and since its leaves were spiny, was named Sea Holly. This name became, in time, fixed upon the genus. Blue Thistle is not much bet- ter, as the plant is not a thistle and but a small section of the genus is blue. Star Thistle is more appropriate, but Eryngium is best of aU, for it at least does not mislead, since nobody knows what it means. The cu
. Our garden flowers; a popular study of their native lands, their life histories, and their structural affiliations. Flowers. PARSLEY FAMILY. Sea Holly is a misnomer. One species, Eryngium maritimum, growing on English beaches, attracted attention, and since its leaves were spiny, was named Sea Holly. This name became, in time, fixed upon the genus. Blue Thistle is not much bet- ter, as the plant is not a thistle and but a small section of the genus is blue. Star Thistle is more appropriate, but Eryngium is best of aU, for it at least does not mislead, since nobody knows what it means. The cultivated members of the group are principally mountain species, natives of the high Alps, the Pyrenees, and the Spanish Sierras. The determining factor which has brought them from their wild homes into the garden is the wonderful tide of blue color which surges up and through and over the plant, so that not only flower and bracts, but stems and leaves are blue. Amethystine Eryngium, Eryngium amethystium, which was brought from the southern Alps into England fully two hundred years ago, is the species longest in cultivation. The plant has never achieved popularity because its extreme rigidity and metallic lustre produce so marked a contrast to softer t)rpes of vegetation as to be irreconcilable within the narrow limits of a garden. It must, however, have value in any large scheme of landscape coloring. The Eryngiums are good inhabitants of poor sandy soils, for the stout roots go down straight and deep and enable their owners to withstand drought. Of the several species in cultivation, Eryngium Bowghti, a dwarf form, is bushy and well set up and might be valuable as a border plant. 332 Amethystine Eryngium. Eryngimn. Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original Keeler, Harriet L. (Harriet Louise), 1846-192
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectflowers, bookyear1910
