The 11 Jul 1914 New York Clipper reported that Famous Players Film Co. had gathered the “greatest aggregation of celebrated stars” at its West Twenty-sixth Street studios in New York, including stage star Marguerite Clark, whose first movie would be Wildflower. Though thirty years old at the time, Clark was known for playing wholesome young girls, and reviewers generally used the word “dainty” to describe her. For example, the 10 Jul 1914 Variety reported that she was “playing the title role of Mary Germaine’s ‘Wildflower. It is of the dainty type, suited to Miss Clark.” She was often compared to Mary Pickford, a fellow Famous Players actress.
       Wildflower was given several release dates, including as late as 30 Nov 1914, before the company settled on 15 Oct 1914. Reviews were generally favorable. “Probably no other star who was ever converted from the stage to the screen has so quickly been conceded a conspicuous place in the first rank of film artistes,” the 31 Oct 1914 New York Clipper noted. Also, the “wealth of beautiful out-of-doors scenes,” as the 24 Oct 1914 Motion Picture News described the film’s many exteriors, was another plus for Wildflower.
       The 31 Oct 1914 New York Clipper reported that Famous Players loaned Marguerite Clark to the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Co. for “a limited time,” in order for her to appear in her third film, The Goose Girl (1915, see entry). One movie company lending a contract star to another, the paper said, “is absolutely unprecedented in film history.” The two companies ultimately merged into one, the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation.
       In 1918, Wildflowers was one of the films in Famous Players-Lasky’s “Success Series,” a reissue program to exploit the studio catalog. A full-page advertisement in the 14 Sep 1918 Moving Picture World read: “The wild flower of the woods is Marguerite Clark who withers away, then blooms again in this charming story—one that helped to make her the popular star she is today….In all it’s truly a masterpiece, brought back to you by popular demand.” However, a review by Edward Weitzel in the 28 Sep 1918 Moving Picture World revealed that the previous four years had removed some of the film’s burnish. Wildflower, he wrote, “serves best the purpose of illustrating the rapid strides forward that the screen has made since this picture was first produced. The story is insipid, has all the faults of its age and lack of experience, and but faintly foreshadows the finished screen art that now marks the impersonations of the star.”