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48
FLORA’S LEXICON.

AROOM. Genista. Class 17, Diadelphia. Order: Decandria. We presume that this plant has been made the emblem of neatness from the uses to which it is constantly applied. In our country villages, and throughout the country, it is known to every thrifty housewife as affording besoms for sweeping, whence originated the name of “broom” for those domestic cleansers.

There are many useful species of it. “The broom,” says Mr. Martyn, “converts the most barren spot into an odoriferous garden.”

NEATNESS.

On me such beauty summer pours,
That I am cover’d o’er with flowers;
And when the frost is in the sky,
My branches are so fresh and gay,
That you might look at me and say,
This plant can never die.
The butterfly, all green and gold,
To me hath often flown,
Here in my blossoms to behold
Wings lovely as his own.

Wordsworth.


Hypericum, all bloom, so thick a swarm
Of flowers, like flies, clothing her slender rods,
That scarce a leaf appears; mezereon too,
Though leafless, well attired, and thick beset
With blushing wreaths, investing every spray;
Althea, with the purple eye; the broom,
Yellow and bright, as bullion unalloyed
Her blossoms.

Cowper.


Sweet blooms genista in the myrtle shade.

Darwin.