Home › Fourteen Favorites Among the Perennials › Fourteen Favorites Among the Perennials: Linum

Fourteen Favorites Among the Perennials: Linum

Flax (Linum perenne) The blue of soft spring skies is reflected in this flower and there is nothing that can quite take its place. It has many virtues and only one really serious failing. It is of vigorous, sturdy growth and its single flowers are borne in profusion on slender, graceful stems throughout almost the entire season. The fact that the flowers are so fragile and last only for a day or so is scarcely realized because new ones are so constantly opening to take the place of those that have gone.

Linum perenne will thrive under any ordinary garden conditions and apparently possesses no particular preference as to soil or location. It is one of those happy things that one can plant almost anywhere, knowing with comforting assurance that it will flourish. The plants are very easily grown from seed, and reach an ultimate height of eighteen to twenty inches. They tend to be bushy in habit, with wide-spreading, slightly arched, slender stems. The one failing of the blue flax is that its myriad flowers close late in the afternoon, opening again early the next morning. To some gardeners, those who are fortunate enough to live with their gardens the whole day through, this would be no disadvantage and the beauty of the open flowers would more than atone for their penchant for early retiring. But for the gardener who returns home from the city at the close of the day and looks forward to the peaceful evening hours of enjoyment in his garden, the beauty of the flowers is lost and it is best not to attempt to grow them. To be sure, there are Sundays; but one can hardly spare much space to a flower which may be enjoyed only one day of seven.