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provide a welcome ana unexpected display of rich color. The genus of spiderworts has kept alive the name of a famous family of British horticulturists. the Tradescants. John Tradescant was head gardener to Charles The First and brought home “the soonfading Spiderwort of Virginia” from an early collecting trip. The same expedition introduced into English gardens the Michelmas daisy, phloxes, lupines, and Virginia creeper.
The electric blue threepetaled spiderwort flower soon became a favorite of cottage gardeners.
New variations of the original wildflowers evolved during three hundred years of garden acceptance until the cultivated plant became a new individual, far from identical to its native ancestors.
Certain curious properties of this modest garden flower tied them by chance to the history of botanical research after the development of the first microscope.
It happens that unique blue hairs veil the stamens of the flowers in a sort ot ostrich-plume mist. Under a microscope each of these tiny hairs appears as a chain of blue beads, each elegant bead a single cell.
Every cell posesses such natural transparency that one can see all the parts by merely sliding them under a microscope. Recent interest
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