The plantain has a history full of romance; its old Northern names--_Wegetritt_ in German, _Weegbree_ in Dutch, _Viebred_ in Danish, and _Weybred_ in Old English, all indicating its presence in the much-trodden paths of man--were not lost in its new home, nor were its characteristics overlooked by the nature-noting and plant-knowing red man. It was called by the Indian "the Englishman's foot," says Josselyn, and by Kalm also, a later traveller in 1740; "for they say where an Englishman trod, there grew a plantain in each footstep." Not less closely did such old garden weeds as motherwort, groundsel, chickweed, and wild mustard cling to the white man. They are old colonists, brought over by the first settlers, and still thrive and triumph in every kitchen garden and back yard in the land. Mullein and nettle, henbane and wormwood, all are English emigrants. The Puritans were not the only flower-lovers in the new land. The Pennsylvania Quakers and Mennonites were quick to plant gardens. Pastorius encouraged all the Germantown settlers to raise flowers as well as fruit. Whittier says of him in his _Pennsylvania Pilgrim_:-- "The flowers his boyhood knew Smiled at his door, the same in form and hue, And on his vines the Rhenish clusters grew." It gives one a pleasant notion of the old Quaker, George Fox, to read his bequest by will of a tract of land near Philadelphia "for a playground for the children of the town to play on and for a garden to plant with physical plants, for lads and lassies to know simples, and learn to make oils and ointments." Among Pennsylvanians the art of gardening reached the highest point. The landscape gardening was a reproduction of the best in England. Our modern country places cannot equal in this respect the colonial country seats near Philadelphia. Woodlands and Bush Hill, the homes of the Hamiltons, Cliveden, of Chief Justice Chew, Fair Hill, Belmont, the estate of Judge Peters, were splendid examples. An ecstatic account of the glories and wonders of some of them was written just after the Revolution by a visitor who fully understood their treasures, the Rev. Manasseh Cutler, the clergyman, statesman, and botanist. In Newport, Rhode Island, where flowers ever seem to thrive with extraordinary luxuriance, there were handsome gardens in the eighteenth century. A description of Mr. Bowler's garden during the Revolution reads thus:--