The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1902-06-14
BEAUTY IN VEGETABLES.
Carnelian of the Tomato and Royal
Purple of Red Cabbage.

From Popular Science News.
Amusement has been offered recently
by a real or pretended recommendation
of vegetables for millinery adornment,
attributed to a vegetarian society.
Doubtless. the prosaic associations of
these with cookery will bar them from
such use. But it is none the less true
that beauty of form and color aboundS
in the products of the kitchen garden;
and the subject has been wholly neg
lected perhaps because, as in other
things, it is SO continually presented to
the eye that it is overlooked by writ
ers. 1t has not been wholly sighted by
the painters; some of the most elab-
crate groups in still life" pictures
have been made up of vegetables; and
kitchen gardens, too, have been the
subjects of paintings, even a field of
cabbages, especially by Teutonic ar
lists 1t is in the street that the beauty
of vegetables is especially forced on
attention. OF course, the vegetables and
fruits bring their colors with them
from the country. But it is along the
barren street that the beauty is pre-
scented to us. How many of the pass
ers-by have eyes to see it and feast
upon it daily? But the Italian, at least,
who often presides over it, must enjoy
a polychromatic delight for his wife
chooses blazing hues in personal adorn-
ment.
But the vegetables, of all artistic
tints and forms! The potato seems to
be the only exception; it is a pig, alike
III form, color and dirt. But, if it were
we'll cleaned, its buff or red and it's
argus eyes might count for something.
Take the potatoes relative, however the
tomato. When not crimson or yellow, it
is pure and intense carnelian; and per-
haps its warm tints gave it the old
name love apple" The red cabbage is
royal purple; it is used by chemists
to get a fine vegetable color.
The egg plant is purple even to
blackness profoundly rich in hue. The
blood beet is so deep a purplish-red
that it may even remind one of Keats
words, "Oeep1dyed as with the blood
OF kings" The carrot is pure salmon
red, and adds it's bits of glow to our
soup. And then there is the bright
rose red of the radish, the globular
variety of which is sometimes cut into
roses to grace a dinner table The red
peppers are appropriately of fiery col
or. The yellOwS are no less rich
Squashes delight in this, as well as in
all fanc1ful forms, showing all golden
effects from pale lemon yellow to deep
burning orange. Along with these are
the ruddy pumpkin and the rich buff
of the ripe muskmelon. AS to the
green products, there are all hues and
shades, and, in some, these are mar
velously variegated, as in the blotched
stripes of the citron melon and the
well-named snake watermelon; also in
the curiously netted stripes of the
large green squash. The whites have
their varieties, such as the opaque
white of turnips, sometimes half color
ed with red; the flesh-like purity of
the parsnip; and the pearly luster of
green corn and white onion
The color is, of course, enhanced by
form, in which, for variety, the
squashes lead the garden host, with
round, lobed, pyriform, or with swan
like shapes. But what a variety of
forms peculiar to each of the others
mentioned And what fullness of form.
as in the rotund compact cabbage, the
oblate lobed tomato, and the melon
swelling out between it's longitudinal
constructions. In other vegetables we
have the charmingly crimpleG and
crinkled leaves, and some dissected in
to fringes and frills, as in parsley and
the exquisite mats of "chicory salad"
Utility alone does not reign in the mar
ket garden; beauty reVels there in root
and fruit, and smiles forth in the green
grocer's display. Indeed, the growing
foliage only might be arranged in a
pretty display for landscape gardening
say striped-leafed corn for the red
stemmed and broad-leafed rhu-
barb surrounding this, then the purple
cabbage. next the finely fringed par
snip, followed by the red topped beet,
and fronted with a border of bright
yellow-green lettuce heads.