Part 6

The foliage of trees and plants, by its amazing profusion, variety, and beauty, must ever have been, as it is now, a subject of admiration and delight, is perhaps full as deserving of notice, and at times even more to be regarded, than the blossoms which accompany it. Let us take only one yard square upon the first verdant ditch-bank in spring, and the variation of form and character which will there be presented may probably exceed general imagination; but the object of all this extraordinary diversity is concealed, with the many other mysteries of creation: yet we have such an ascendant thirst for information upon the causes and nature of the things about us, as to render it an apparent inherent principle of the mind, inducing it to gratitude and love. From information in all the works of Providence arises, as a necessary consequence, admiration, and an exalted sense of supreme intelligence and goodness. Without the desire of knowing the designs and processes of things, no investigation would be bestowed, and we should remain in ignorance of all but the bare facts, and gross perceptions of creation; nor can it be questioned but that the more extensive our acquaintance is with the objects of Providence, in such proportions must our convictions be of his justice, wisdom, and power.

The great utility of foliage, and its agency in accomplishing the requirements of the plant and its products, are well known; and we can form some comprehension of the vast supply that is required by a tree, when we view its foliage, each leaf being employed in receiving and transmitting gases from the air in certain proportions to the plant: these great operations having been effected during the summer months, and this agency of the leaves finished, they fall to the ground, not as a useless encumbrance, but to convey a large portion of fresh soil peculiarly fitted for the nutriment of vegetation. Should they remain in any quantity beneath the tree, they appear to be injurious to the smaller herbage, but they are more generally dispersed as they part from the sprays by the gales of autumn, which whirl them along in crowds to the hedges, trenches, and ditches around: here they accumulate and decay, furnishing, in conjunction with other vegetable decompositions, a very nutritive earth, as is manifest by the wild plants growing in those situations, for notwithstanding all the obstructions of shade, thorns, and briers, they are generally found in great luxuriance or health. This earth in time crumbled by frosts, and washed by rains into the ditches from the banks, becomes accumulated there, and we collect it, compost it with other matters, and use it as a beneficial dressing for our cultivated lands: many of these leaves, however, remain near the tree, and soon communicate their virtues to the herbage: some are consumed by natural consequences, others are attacked by small fungi, which break their surfaces, admit moisture, and facilitate decay; the worm now seizes them as his portion, and having fed upon a part, draws the remainder into the earth, where a rapid separation of the parts takes place, and they are received through the roots into vegetable circulation anew; and thus the beautiful foliage which has been so pleasing during our summer months, supplied the tree with sustenance to increase its magnitude, and all the requisites demanded by its fruits and products—has glowed perhaps with splendor, and been our admiration in the decline of the year, now returns to the soil, not to encumber it, but to administer health and vigor to a new series of vegetation, and circulate in combinations hidden from any human perception.

By a very wise appointment, peculiar propensities have been bestowed upon the vegetable world, greatly assimilating to the tastes and inclinations of the animated tribes. Beasts and insects feed on particular plants, and reject others, and the delight of one is disgusting to another. So, some plants, not having the power of locomotion, will thrive only in certain compounded soils, aspects, and situations, evincing a similar tendency to preference of nourishment as do the sensitive tribes; and some districts, that vary a little in their component parts or position from those adjoining, will present an individual or a race that is not found in another: the common product of the North or of the East is treasured in the Herbarium of the southern or western botanist; we can boast but few, yet we have some of these capricious children of the soil.

The fetid hellebore (helleborus fœtidus) is not a common plant with us, but we find it sparingly in one or two places; and though a plant indigenous to Britain, yet it is not improbable that it has strayed from cultivation, and become naturalized in many of the places in which we now find it. Its uses as an herb of celebrity for some complaints of cattle occasioned its being fostered in many a cottage garden long since erased, where the good wife was the simple doctress of the village, when perhaps mortality was not more extensive than in these days of greater pretension and display. Modern practice yet retains preparations of this herb, but it appears that, from the powerful manner in which they act, great discretion is necessary in their administration. This hellebore is one of our few plants that present us with a dull, unsightly, unpleasing blossom. We have many with a corolla so small as to be little noticed; but this plant, and the fetid iris (iris fœtidissima), produce blossoms, that would generally be considered as darksome and cheerless. There is no part of a vegetable which we usually admire more than its flowers, for that endless variety of colors, shades, forms, and odors, with which they are endowed; yet the utility of the blossom is by no means obvious. Linnæus calls the corolla the arras, the tapestry of the plant; and we are perfectly sensible that the blossom in very many instances is essential in various ways to securing and perfecting the germen; that it often contains the food of multitudes of insects, which feed on the pollen, the honey, or the germen; and that the odor emitted by it leads frequently various creatures to the object in request, and by their agency the fecundation and perfecting of the seeds are often effected: but we are astonished at the elaborate mechanism and splendor of some species, and see the whole race of creation, with the exception of man, utterly regardless of them. Butterflies and other insects will bask on expanded flowers, and frequent their disks, but it is in wantonness, or to feed on the sweet liquors they contain. The carpenter bee,[16] that every summer cuts its little circular patches in such quantities from my roses to line its nest in the old garden door, selects the green leaves only, chiefly from the China, Provence, and damask kinds,[17] passing over the petals of their blossoms as useless. That splendid insect the rose-beetle[18] (cetonia aurata), that beds and bathes in sweetness, will partially eat the flowers of some species of roses, and “lap the nectar they produce;” and a few others nibble a little; but the liliaceous tribes, and other glorious flowers, as far as we know, furnish to insects no supply, but expand, wither, and die, unnoticed but by the eye of man alone. Flowers that are grand, gay, cheerful or beautiful, predominate infinitely over those that are of a sombre hue or gloomy aspect. Employment and occupation were as much the design, as they are found to be essential to the happiness of human life: we are not all constituted to soar in the higher regions of scientific research; our dispositions are as various as our intellects. Horticulture was the first occupation instituted for man, and he cannot pursue a more innocent and harmless employ: we were given “every herb, and every tree upon the face of the earth.” For food, or raiment, the immediate necessities of man, a very few of them are applicable; but we can collect them for amusement, in admiration of their beauty. Without this beauty, they would be no object of research; and man, who is exclusively sensible of its existence, can alone find pleasure in viewing it. The mind that is delighted with such admiration, must be almost insensibly led to an attendant pleasure, the contemplation, the perception of infinite wisdom and power, manifested in the adornment, splendor, and formation, of even the simplest flower of the field. I would not arrogate for man an exclusive right, or make him generally the sole consideration of the beneficence of Providence; but there are influences, which his reason can alone perceive, incitements to good thoughts and worthy actions.

Flowers, in all ages, have been made the representatives of innocence and purity. We decorate the bride, and strew her path with flowers: we present the undefiled blossoms, as a similitude of her beauty and untainted mind; trusting that her destiny through life will be like theirs, grateful and pleasing to all. We scatter them over the shell, the bier, and the earth, when we consign our mortal blossoms to the dust, as emblems of transient joy, fading pleasures, withered hopes; yet rest in sure and certain trust that each in due season will be renewed again. All the writers of antiquity make mention of their uses and application in heathen and pagan ceremonies, whether of the temple, the banquet, or the tomb—the rites, the pleasures, or the sorrows of man; and in concord with the usages of the period, the author of the “Book of Wisdom” says, “Let us crown ourselves with rose-buds and flowers before they wither.” All orders of creation, “every form of creeping things and abominable beasts,” have been, perhaps, at one time or another, by some nation or sect, either the objects of direct worship, or emblems of an invisible sanctity; but though individuals of the vegetable world may have veiled the mysteries, and been rendered sacred to particular deities and purposes, yet in very few instances, we believe, were they made the representatives of a deified object, or been bowed down to with divine honors. The worship of the one true Being could never have been polluted by any symbol suggested by the open flowers and lily-work of the temple.

The love of flowers seems a naturally implanted passion, without any alloy or debasing object as a motive: the cottage has its pink, its rose, its polyanthus; the villa, its geranium, its dahlia, and its clematis: we cherish them in youth, we admire them in declining days; but, perhaps, it is the early flowers of spring that always bring with them the greatest degree of pleasure, and our affections seem immediately to expand at the sight of the first opening blossom under the sunny wall, or sheltered bank, however humble its race may be. In the long and sombre months of winter our love of nature, like the buds of vegetation, seems closed and torpid; but, like them, it unfolds and reanimates with the opening year, and we welcome our long-lost associates with a cordiality, that no other season can excite, as friends in a foreign clime. The violet of autumn is greeted with none of the love with which we hail the violet of spring; it is unseasonable, perhaps it brings with it rather a thought of melancholy than of joy; we view it with curiosity, not affection: and thus the late is not like the early rose. It is not intrinsic beauty or splendor that so charms us, for the fair maids of spring cannot compete with the grander matrons of the advanced year; they would be unheeded, perhaps lost, in the rosy bowers of summer and of autumn; no, it is our first meeting with a long- lost friend, the reviving glow of a natural affection, that so warms us at this season: to maturity they give pleasure, as a harbinger of the renewal of life, a signal of awakening nature, or of a higher promise; to youth, they are expanding being, opening years, hilarity and joy; and the child, let loose from the house, riots in the flowery mead, and is

“Monarch of all he surveys.”

There is not a prettier emblem of spring than an infant sporting in the sunny field, with its osier basket wreathed with butter-cups, orchises, and daisies. With summer flowers we seem to live as with our neighbors, in harmony and good-will: but spring flowers are cherished as private friendships.

The amusements and fancies of children, when connected with flowers, are always pleasing, being generally the conceptions of innocent minds unbiassed by artifice or pretence; and their love of them seems to spring from a genuine feeling and admiration, a kind of sympathy with objects as fair as their own untainted minds: and I think that it is early flowers which constitute their first natural playthings; though summer presents a greater number and variety, they are not so fondly selected. We have our daisies strung and wreathed about our dress; our coronals of orchises and primroses; our cowslip balls, &c.; and one application of flowers at this season I have noticed, which, though perhaps it is local, yet it has a remarkably pretty effect, forming for the time one of the gayest little shrubs that can be seen. A small branch or long spray of the white thorn, with all its spines uninjured, is selected; and on these its alternate thorns, a white and a blue violet, plucked from their stalks, are stuck upright in succession, until the thorns are covered, and when placed in a flower-pot of moss, has perfectly the appearance of a beautiful vernal flowering dwarf shrub, and as long as it remains fresh is an object of surprise and delight.

No portion of creation has been resorted to by mankind with more success for the ornament and decoration of their labors than the vegetable world. The rites, emblems, and mysteries of religion; national achievements, eccentric masks, and the capricious visions of fancy, have all been wrought by the hand of the sculptor, on the temple, the altar, or the tomb; but plants, their foliage, flowers, or fruits, as the most graceful, varied, and pleasing objects that meet our view, have been more universally the object of design, and have supplied the most beautiful, and perhaps the earliest, embellishments of art. The pomegranate, the almond, and flowers, were selected, even in the wilderness, by divine appointment, to give form to the sacred utensils; the rewards of merit, the wreath of the victor, were arboraceous; in later periods, the acanthus, the ivy, the lotus, the vine, the palm, and the oak, flourished under the chisel, or in the loom of the artist; and in modern days, the vegetable world affords the almost exclusive decorations of ingenuity and art. The cultivation of flowers is of all the amusements of mankind the one to be selected and approved as the most innocent in itself, and most perfectly devoid of injury or annoyance to others; the employment is not only conducive to health and peace of mind, but probably more good-will has arisen, and friendships been founded by the intercourse and communication connected with this pursuit than from any other whatsoever: the pleasures, the ecstasies of the horticulturist are harmless and pure; a streak, a tint, a shade, becomes his triumph, which though often obtained by chance, are secured alone by morning care, by evening caution, and the vigilance of days: an employ which, in its various grades, excludes neither the opulent nor the indigent, and teeming with boundless variety, affords an unceasing excitement to emulation without contempt or ill-will.

The bouquet may be an exile now; but the revolutions of fashion will surely return this beautiful ornament to favor again. With us the nosegay yet retains its station as a decoration to our Sunday beaux; but at our spring clubs and associations it becomes an essential, indispensable appointment; a little of the spirit of rivalry seeming to animate our youths in the choice and magnitude of this adornment. The superb spike of a Brompton, or a ten weeks’ stock, long cherished in some sheltered corner for the occasion, surrounded by all the gaiety the garden can afford, till it presents a very bush of flowers, forms the appendage of their bosoms, and, with the gay knots in their hats, their best garments, and the sprightly hilarity of their looks, constitutes a pleasing village scene, and gives an hour of unencumbered felicity to common man and rural life, not yet disturbed by refinement and taste.

“Oh, who can hold a fire in his hand By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?”

And yet the shivering of the aspen, or poplar tree (populus tremula), in the breeze will give us the sensation of coldness, and communicate an involuntary shuddering. The construction of the foliage of this tree is peculiarly adapted for motion: a broad leaf placed upon a long footstalk, so flexile, as scarcely to be able to support the leaf in an upright posture: the upper part of this stalk, on which the play or action seems mainly to depend, is contrary to the nature of footstalks in general, being perfectly flattened, and, as an eminent botanist and esteemed gentleman, Dr. I. Stokes, observes, is placed at a right angle with the leaf, being thus peculiarly fitted to receive the impulse of every wind that blows. This stalk is furnished with three strong nerves, placed parallel, and acting in unison with each other; but towards the base the stalk becomes round, and then the nerves assume a triangular form, and constitute three distinct supports and counteractions to each other’s motions. I know no petiole with a similar conformation, or better calculated for the vibration of a leaf. The leaf-stalks of plants are very curious constructions; and the nerves and vessels contained in them, which are the vehicles of a large portion of that nourishment which plants receive through their foliage from the air, seem in general differently placed, and fitted for variety of operation. The poplar is a tree that occasions at times a great deal of trouble in our pasture lands, by the tendency which it has to extend its roots, and throw out suckers. Three or four of this species in a hedge-row, bounding a meadow in my occupation, oblige me every year that the field is mowed, by their prolificacy, to send a man with his stock-ax to remove their numerous offspringing; a mere temporary expedient, tending rather to increase the complaint, as eradication by trenching with the spade can alone effectually check the encroachments of runners so tenacious of life, and rapid in growth.

The dyer’s broom[19] (genista tinctoria) abounds with us, and becomes a perfect encumbrance in our clay-land pastures. It is seldom eaten by cattle, except in cases of great necessity, and remains untouched, if other food be obtainable, giving a deceitful appearance of verdure to a naked pasture. It yet retains a place in some of our dispensatories; but its medicinal virtues are probably never made trial of in modern practice, the lenient assuasives of our forefathers seeming unequal to contention with the constitutions of these days. I know not any use to which it is applicable but for the dyer. Our poorer people a few years ago used to collect it by cartloads, about the month of July; and the season of “woodwaxen” was a little harvest to them: but it interfered greatly with our haymaking. Women could gain each about two shillings a day, clear of all expenses, by gathering it; but they complained that it was a very hard and laborious occupation, the plant being drawn up by the roots, which are strongly interwoven in the soil. The dyer gave them eight-pence for a hundred weight; but I fear the amount was greatly enhanced by the dishonest practice of watering the load, for the specious purpose of keeping it green; and the old woodwaxers tell me, that, without the increase of weight which the water gave the article, they should have had but little reward for their labor. Greediness here, however, as in most other cases, ruined the trade, the plant becoming so injured and stinted by repeated pullings, as to be in these parts no longer an object worth seeking for; and our farmers rather discountenance the custom, as the “green-weed” preserves and shelters at its roots a considerable quantity of coarse herbage, which in the winter and spring months is of great importance to the young cattle browsing in the pastures. The use of this dyer’s broom is to prepare woollen cloths for the reception of another color. It communicates to the article a dull yellow, which will then, by being dipped in another liquor or composition, according to the shade required, receive a green hue. Vegetable filaments, cotton, flax, &c., are very differently formed from those threads afforded by animals, as silk and wool, and are differently disposed to receive colors. The dye that will give a fine color to the one, is perhaps rejected by the other; and this plant is rarely or never used by the dyer for cotton articles. That certain natural productions receive and retain, and others reject or soon part with artificial colorings, are in some cases in consequence of the nature of the substance, and in others by reason of the conformation of the fibre; but any examination of this kind would only occasion a tedious discussion and remain very obscure at last. We find certain effects produced and reason upon them, but so small are the parts operated upon, minute the agents, and equivocal the connexion, that we can do little more than theorize upon the subject; but perhaps I may slightly instance the difference existing in the fibre of flax and silk. The parts which compose the filaments of the former are generally considered as being flat and flaky, whereas those of the latter are tubular and round: this conformation renders silk so soft to the touch, and refracting more perfectly the rays of light, occasions much of its lustre, and the brilliancy of its hues. Perhaps we have no art or trade less confined within the trammels of formulæ than that of the dyer; every professor appearing to have his own methods of acquiring particular tints and shades, guided often in his proportions by that mutable sense, the taste, and regulating the temperature of his compositions, not by the thermometer, but by the feeling of the hand;—and so capricious are these tests, so different the sensations of the operator, or the variable influences of solar light, that success on one day does not insure a similar result on another.

Color is probably only reflected light; but by what means the absorption of oxygen increases the lustre is not quite obvious—yet the power of the sun’s rays, in augmenting the intensity of the hues of many things, is well known: there is an admirable green color for foliage, to be obtained by the union of the light Prussian blue with the dark gamboge; but I could never acquire this clear and lustrous, without compounding it in the light of the sun. As the young artist will find this a most useful pigment, I may in addition say, that a small bit of the light Prussian, with three or four times the quantity of gamboge, must be laid upon the pallet, or in the saucer, and with a drop or two of water, only enough to make it work easily, be most thoroughly united and incorporated by the finger, with the sun shining upon the mixture, adding more gamboge repeatedly during the operation, until the blue is subdued and a clear green produced; but if a tedious operation, yet perseverance will ultimately produce a very brilliant permanent green.