The patient, anxious, exquisite care with which he
carried on these experiments suggests the infinite pains with which he
gathered and classified and sifted and weighed his historical material
(his material of "France Speciosum" and of "France Auratum"). The result
of his floral experiment, the wonderfully beautiful flower which he
produced, described in a London horticultural magazine as the "grandest
flowering plant yet introduced into our gardens," and known as the "Lilium
Parkmanni," is suggestive of his achievement in so depicting and defining
that civilization which is symbolized by the lily, the fleur-de-lis, in
its strange, wild, highly colored flowering on the prairies and by the
rivers of Nouvelle France, as to make it for all time identified with his
memory and name. He lived among roses of his own growing, through his
later invalid years, in the outskirts of Boston. He even wrote a book
about roses. But his peculiar triumph (the one flower that lingers in
gardens carrying a memory of him) is a "magnificent" lily.
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