Different and Diverse- A Peak At Illinois Wildflowers
Fascinating and elegant, wildflowers in Illinois can take your breath away with their beautiful characteristics and radiant colors. They can be found all over in Illinois, and maybe in locations you would never think of. All of these wildflowers are very diverse and different. The kittentail and purple false foxglove for example are different yet interesting wildflowers located in Illinois. More wildflowers would be loosestrife and the sunflower; both of these flowers can catch your eyes in moments with their beautiful appearance and neat history. Lastly, the pokeberry and goldenrod wildflowers are diverse but also very intriguing flowers that will surely interest you. Unique and diverse are only some words that can describe these radiant wildflowers, and they all combine to make a more beautiful and more diverse Illinois.
Kittentail Physical Characteristics
The kittentail is a very delicate and interesting flower. Even though it’s scientific name is Besseya bulli, many people refer them to be called kittentails. They are grown and produced in prairies of rolling hills and green grass. The stalk of this wildflower is hairy and small, along with a green color. The leaves are an oval shape, and the upper and lower surfaces of the leaves are different shades of green. The upper surface of the leaf is a darker green color, and the lower surface is more of a light green (“Kittentails” para. 1). The inflorescence, the producing of blossoms, of these flowers are small and their size ranges between two and six inches. Clustered along the spike or base, the flowers are facing different directions, giving the flowers a full and voluminous look. Underneath each flower is a bract, ...
... middle of paper ...
...s of Illinois Sung to Favorite Childhood Tunes. Moline, IL: Illinois Writers Guild, 1993. 28. Print.
Busch, Lottie. "Loosestrife." Violets and Dutchman's Breeches: Wildflowers of Illinois Sung to Favorite Childhood Tunes. Moline, IL: Illinois Writers Guild, 1993. 21. Print.
Busch, Lottie. "Pokeberry." Violets and Dutchman's Breeches: Wildflowers of Illinois Sung to Favorite Childhood Tunes. Moline, IL: Illinois Writers Guild, 1993. 32. Print.
Busch, Lottie. "Sunflower." Violets and Dutchman's Breeches: Wildflowers of Illinois Sung to Favorite Childhood Tunes. Moline, IL: Illinois Writers Guild, 1993. 33. Print.
"Kittentails." N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Apr. 2014. .
"Purple False Foxglove." N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Apr. 2014. .
Hickman, J.M. "Prologue." Hickman, J.M. Songs From The Ozarks And Other Poems. 6th. Vicksburg: The Mississippi Printing Company, 1921. 5. Hardcover Book.
As John Muir said, ”I found beautiful Calypso on the mossy bank of a stream, growing not in the ground but on a bed of yellow mosses in which its small white bulb had found a soft nest and from which its one leaf and one flower sprung.” Muir lets us know how beautiful that moment was; he exclaims how everything ugly and painful around the flower didn't really seem to matter when he saw the a flower named calypso. A famous poet named William Wordsworth also shows his encounter with a flower. Unlike Muir’s encounter, it was with several flowers. Everything around Wordsworth was indeed beautiful but he did not feel very pleasant. He felt lonely, but the flowers seemed to lighten him up. John Muir’s story “Calypso Borealis” and William Wordsworth’s poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” expressed their relationship with nature by telling readers about their encounter with the marvelous flower/s: Although Muir saw one single calypso flowers, and Wordsworth saw a whole field full of daffodils.
Burden Ernest E. San Francisco's Wildflower : the Palace of Fine Arts. Phoenix Publishing Co., San Francisco 1967.
Lehner, Ernst, and Johanna Lehner. Folklore and Symbolism of Flowers, Plants and Trees. New York: Tudor. 1960
All selections used from Our Hearts Fell to the Ground, edited by Colin G. Calloway.
Miss Strangeworth is a very proud woman, almost too proud about her house and her town. The first thing she brags about are her roses, she never lets anyone take them because she loves them so much. She also was very proud of her grandmother and grand father because they were the first to build a house in what is now a town, the town ‘wanted to put up a
In “The Violets” I entwine the past and present, the reoccurring flower motif of ‘spring violets’ sprout in both memory and reality to reflect the persona’s age and perceptions “I kneel to pick frail melancholy flowers among ashes and loam”. The violets portray the persona as an adult, whose gained knowledge and lacking innocence has created a critical, melancholic view on her world. This is juxtaposed by the persona’s childhood perception; “spring violets in their loamy bed”. In childhood, beauty was simplistic and untainted by knowledge and human experience; blessed by innocence.
Squires, Sally. "The Double Sweet but Not So Innocent?." The Washington Post. Washington Post. 30 Jul 2006 .
“A Song in the Front Yard”, by Gwendolyn Brooks, illustrates the desire people develop to experience new things and live life according to their own rules. In the first stanza, Brooks uses diction of propriety and unfamiliarity to emphasize the author’s desire to change her life. In the first line, the author establishes that she is only familiar with one way of life since she has “stayed in the front yard all [her] life.” The author “stayed” in the front yard suggesting that she was able to leave the yard and experience new things, but she just was not ready. She was raised in the “front yard,” highlighting the idea that the “front” is the proper way for her to live her life. In the second line, the author realizes there is much more to experience in life and she “[wants] a peek at the back.” At this point in her life, she is not ready to abandon the only life she knows, but she wants to look at the other side of things and all of the different experiences she can have. In the third line, the back yard is described as being, “rough and untended and hungry weed grows,” again representing how Brooks is only used to one place. In the front yard, everything is neat, properly tended, and no weeds grow. After seeing this, she realizes that life is not always as perfect as she was raised to believe, so she wants a taste of something new. In the fourth line, the author says, “a girl gets sick of a rose,” showing how Brooks has had enough of the front yard life and needs to experience new things. The “rose” is used to represent life in the front yard. A “rose” is usually associated with perfection and beauty, reflecting the author’s life in the “front yard.”
Seaton, Beverly. The Language of Flowers: A History: Victorian Literature and Culture Series. Charlottesville and London: University Press of London, 1995. Print.
Kroeber, Karl. Romantic Landscape Vision: Constable and Wordsworth. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1975.
The short story “Marigolds” by E. Collier is a story about a girl who becomes a woman after she destroys Mrs. Lottie’s Marigolds. She is still ignorant about her situation in life until she hears her father crying because of the Great Depression. She and her family lives in a minuscule town in rural Maryland in 1930. She is still a girl that likes to play with the children in the town and all of the children despise Mrs. Lottie’s Marigolds because of its perfect beauty in the shanty town.
In the early 16th century the Netherlands experienced what was called “tulip mania” this was the beginning of the nations love for flora and foliage (Taylor 13). The result of this impressive flower invasion was a society that took a historical turn from which the results still remain today. Flower merchants, botanists and floral still life artists, were occupations that were an accurate reflection of the Netherlands demands (Brown). An interesting example of a life that was effected by, and devoted to the archiving of the flower craze was Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750) the 17th century Dutch flower painter. Rachel Ruyschs’ career straddled the 17th and 18th century, and her stunningly accurate floral pieces reflect the maturing, yet evolving art of floral still life painting (“Rachel Ruysch: Bibliography”). Ruyschs’ Still Life with Flowers on a Marble Tabletop (1716) is an excellent example of a painting that appropriately represents the genre of art that was created solely through specific societal events.
Eugenia Collier’s “Marigolds” is a memoir of a colored girl living in the Great Depression. The story does not focus on the troubles society presents to the narrator (Elizabeth), but rather is focused on the conflict within her. Collier uses marigolds to show that the changes from childhood to adulthood cause fear in Elizabeth, which is the enemy of compassion and hope.
Walker uses the positive imagery of “The Flowers” at the beginning of the novel to set up a naïve, sweet world in which a gruesome appearance of the lynched victim turns out to a reasonably unexpected, shocking event that robs Myop of her innocence. The first half of the text focuses on Myop’s childlike innocence with sweet kinesthetic imagery of Myop feeling “good and warm in the sun” to hit specifically on Myop’s childlike inhibitions. In the same case, sweet and gentle visual imagery continues to play in the first few paragraphs of a happy agricultural lifestyle where “each day a golden surprise” and a ten year old girl like Myop could “skip lightly from her house to pigpen” and bounce “this way and that way”. Myop’s joyful rapping of the stick that goes “tat-de-ta-ta-ta” enables auditory imagery to play on a merry sort of onomatopoeia that goes strongly with Myop’s innocence. Imagery had little direct prepa...