While the wild blue phlox is sometimes cultivated, it is the GARDEN PHLOX (P. paniculata), common in woods and thickets from Pennsylvania to Illinois and southward, that under a gardener's care bears the large terminal clusters of purple, magenta, crimson, pink, and white flowers abundant in old-fashioned, hardy borders. From these it has escaped so freely in many sections of the North and East as to be counted among the local wildflowers. Unless the young offshoots are separated from the parent and given a nook of their own, the flower quickly reverts to the original type. European cultivators claim that the most brilliant colors are obtained by crossing annual with perennial phloxes. WILD SWEET WILLIAM (P. maculata), another perennial much sought by cultivators, loves the moisture of low woods and the neighborhood of streams in the Middle and Western States when it is free to choose its habitat; but it, too, has so freely escaped from gardens farther north into dry and dusty roadsides, that anyone who has passed the ruins of Hawthorne's little red cottage at Lenox, for example, and seen the way his wife's clump of white phlox under his study window has spread to cover an acre of hillside, would suppose it to be luxuriating in its favorite locality. This variety of the species (var. Candida) lacks the purplish flecks on stem and lower leaves responsible for the specific name of the type. Pinkish purple or pink blossoms are borne in a rather narrow, elongated panicle on the typical Sweet William. Most members of the phlox family resort to the trick of coating the upper stem and the peduncles immediately below the flowers with a sticky secretion in which crawling insects, intent on pilfering sweets, meet their death, just as birds are caught on limed twigs. Butterflies, for whom phloxes have narrowed their tubes to the exclusion of most other insects, are their benefactors; but long-tongued bees and flies often seek their nectar. Indeed, the number of strictly butterfly-flowers is surprisingly small. VIRGINIA COWSLIP; TREE or SMOOTH LUNGWORT; BLUE-BELLS (Mertensia Virginica) Borage family Flowers - Pinkish in bud, afterward purplish blue, fading to light blue; about 1 in. long, tubular, funnel form, the tube of corolla not crested; spreading or hanging on slender pedicels in showy, loose clusters at end of smooth stem from 1 to 2 ft. high; stamens 5, inserted on corolla; 1 pistil; ovary of 4 divisions. Leaves: Large, entire, alternate, veiny, oblong or obovate, the upper ones seated on stem; lower very large ones diminishing toward base into long petioles; at first rich, dark purple, afterward pale bluish gray. Fruit: 4 seed-like little nuts, leathery, wrinkled when mature. Preferred Habitat - Alluvial ground, low meadows, and along streams. Flowering Season - March-May. Distribution - Southern Canada to South Carolina and Kansas, west to Nebraska; most abundant in middle West.