Collecting flowers

I collected flowers of different colors and there were many more, but I thought few are fine - you get the idea. After going a little way up the mountain, I realised that few petals were just falling off by themselves. One light violet had four petals, two had fallen to the ground, one on to my right and the other to the left. I didnt feel like taking them back and just left the little boquet by a rock, to the mountain. I was wondering why I felt like collecting the flowers only this time. I had seen them a month ago too. This time, away from the trail, there was abundance of some medium size perfect looking yellow flowers on the slopes. Somehow I got this idea that such are the flowers which attract people like the 'La Belle Dame sans Merci'. I picked one such on the way back. After walking with it for a while, I realised the stem was bending.
I had seen an old man walk down with his collection of flowers. At the saddle, someone pointed out that the old man was 90 years old and he had come along with his 65 year old son.
One tip I followed: Never collect the only plant of a population.