The other night I dragged home a large stack of gardening and plant
books of various vintages from the library. Some aren't terribly
useful, some are delightful, but the one I'm most enjoying for my
current purpose (finding (mostly) native plants for the yard) is George
D. Aiken's _Pioneering with Wildflowers_. As I started to read it, I
totally missed something that makes it, to my mind, even more
charming: Aiken was not just a nurseryman and life-long plant lover,
he was Vermont's governor and a US Senator. Anyone who loves moneywort
as much as I do has won my heart, anyway, but I would like to think
that a government full of gardeners would be... something.

Although he started writing editions of the book in the 1930s, I've
got the 1978 edition in hand, and I have a question, for anyone else
familiar with the book: there is a lovely photo of allotropa virgata,
candystick, but nowhere in the book does there appear to be a
description. Since the book is about growing native plants, I would
think Aiken managed to grow this stunner, too, but on-line research so
far suggests to me that it's not an easy one. (An NPR Earth and Sky
program reports it needs, hm, was it fungus plus some other local
condition to grow.) Is candystick a plant one could grow in the home
garden? Does Aiken write about it in a section omitted from this
edition?

-another Ann, on the family farm in zone 5