Part 8

The plain, simple, unadorned vervain[24] (verbena officinalis) is one of our most common, and decidedly waste-loving plants. Disinclined to all cultured places, it fixes its residence by way-sides, and old stone quarries, thriving under the feet of every passing creature. The celebrity that this plant obtained in very remote times, without its possessing one apparent quality, or presenting by its manner of growth, or form, any mysterious character to arrest the attention, or excite imagination is very extraordinary, and perhaps unaccountable: most nations venerated, esteemed, and used it; the ancients had their Verbenalia, at which period the temples and frequented places were strewed and sanctified with vervain; the beasts for sacrifice, and the altars, were verbenated, the one filleted, the other strewed, with the sacred herb; no incantation or lustration was perfect without the aid of this plant. That mistletoe[25] should have excited attention in days of darkness and ignorance, is not a subject of surprise, from the extraordinary and obscure manner of its growth and propagation, and the season of the year in which it flourishes; for even the great lord Bacon ridicules the idea of its being propagated by the operations of a bird as an “idle tradition,” saying, that the sap which produces this plant is such as the “tree doth excerne and cannot assimilate.” These circumstances, and its great dissimilarity from the plant on which it vegetates, all combine to render it a subject of superstitious wonder: but that a lowly, ineffective herb like our vervain should have stimulated the imaginations of the priests of Rome, of Gaul, and of Greece, the magi of India, and the Druids of Britain, is passing comprehension; and, as Pennant observes, “so general a consent proves that the custom arose before the different nations had lost all communication with each other.” We might with some appearance of reason, perhaps, name the Druids of Gaul as the point, whence certain mysteries and observances were conveyed to the priesthood of various nations; but it would be difficult to assign a motive for their fixing upon such plants as vervain, and some others, to give efficacy to their ceremonies and rites. In some of the Welsh counties, vervain is known by the name of “Ilyssiaur hudol,” the enchanter’s plant. It seems to have had ascribed to it the power of curing the bites of all rabid animals, arresting the progress of the venom of serpents, reconciling antipathies, conciliating friendships, &c. Gerard, after detailing some of its virtues from Pliny, observes, that “many odde old wives’ fables are written of vervaine tending to witchcraft and sorcerie, which you may read elsewhere, for I am not willing to trouble you with reporting such trifles as honest ears abhorre to hear.” To us moderns its real virtues are unknown; regular practice does not allow that it possesses any medicinal efficacy, and its fanciful peculiarities are in no repute; yet it seems to hanker after its lost fame, and lingers around the dwellings of man; for though not solely found about our habitations, as Miller thought, yet generally, when perceived, it is near some inhabited or ruined residence, not as a stray from cultivation, but from preference. Our village doctresses, an almost extinct race of useful, valuable women, the consolers, the comforters, and often mitigators of the ailments of the poor, still make use of vervain tea as a strengthener, and the dried powder of its leaves as a vermifuge; but probably in another generation all the venerated virtues of the vervain will be consigned to oblivion. This plant seems to be the native growth of many districts in Europe, Asia, and Africa.

The dyers’ weed, yellow weed, weld, or wold (reseda luteola),[26] thrives in all our abandoned stone quarries, upon the rejected rubbish of the lime-kiln, and waste places of the roads, apparently a perfectly indigenous plant. Unmindful of frost, or of drought, it preserves a degree of verdure, when nearly all other vegetation is seared up by these extremes in exposed situations. It was, and is yet, I believe, cultivated in England for the use of the dyer. We import it, however, into Bristol from France; and it sells in that city for ten shillings per cwt. in a dry state. It gives a fine, permanent, yellow color to cottons, silks, and woollens, in a variety of shades, by the aid of alum, &c. A blue tincture changes these to as fine a green. Injury has certainly been occasioned by writers on agricultural affairs recommending, without due inquiry, the culture of this or that crop; and I would not incur a censure that I blame in another; yet I cannot but suggest the possible profit that might arise from the culture of this plant. If foreigners derive sufficient encouragement to import it, notwithstanding the charges of freight, port duties, and various consequent expenses, why can it not be grown with us, and afford superior remuneration, not having such deductions to diminish the profits? The culture of it seems very simple, the manner of conducting the crop, and harvesting the product, attended with little trouble or risk. Marshal[27] prefers a good soil; others again say, that it becomes stalky in a rich soil. With us it grows luxuriantly, three or four feet high, on a thin, stony, undressed soil, apparently the very station it prefers; and we have about us much land of this kind, not intrinsically worth ten shillings an acre. It might be rash to predict the amount of a crop in such soils, but a ton to an acre is said to be but a small allowance; yet the produce of only this quantity, which would procure in the market a return of 10_l._ without any expenditure for manure, no more manual labor after the seed is sown, for nine months, than three thinnings, and cleanings with the hoe, and the crop harvested within the year, would be no trifling profit, and may be deserving of some consideration.[28] The bark, the wood, the flower, the leaves of many of our native trees and plants afford a yellow dye; we have no color so easily produced as this is; and it is equally remarkable, that, amidst all the varied hues of spring, yellow is the most predominant in our wild and cultured plants. The primrose, cowslip, pilewort, globe-flower, butter-cup, cherlock, crocus, all the cabbage tribe, the dandelions, appear in this dress. The very first butterfly, that will

“aloft repair, And sport, and flutter in the fields of air,”

is the sulphur butterfly (gonepteryx rhamni),[29] which in the bright sunny mornings of March we so often see under the warm hedge, or by the side of some sheltered copse, undulating, and vibrating like the petal of a primrose in the breeze. The blossoms of many of our plants afford for the decoration of the fair a vast variety of colors and intermediate tints; but they are all of them, or nearly so, inconstant or fugitive before the light of the sun, or mutable in the dampness of the air, except those obtained from yellow flowers: circumstances may vary the shade, but yet it is mostly permanent. Yellow is again the livery of autumn, in all the shades of ochre and of orange; the “sere and yellow leaf” becomes the general cast of the season, the sober brown comes next, and then decay.

Many impressions commonly fade away and become effaced as other objects create fresh sensations; but the love of nature, where the regard has been a settled principle, is more permanent, and influences the feelings as long as the occupations of life preserve any interest in our minds. As a child, I viewed the wild field flowers and cropped them with delight; as a young botanist, culled with rapture the various species, returning often and again to my almost exhaustless treasure in the copse; and even now, in the “sere and yellow leaf,” when, in some mild vernal evening, I stroll through the grove, see the same floral splendor which year after year has been spread before me, I mark it with admiration and surprise, find it enchanting still, and fancy the present loveliness superior to all that has been before. There we see that beautiful little brilliant of the earth, like the name it bears (day’s eye), cheerful and pleasing to all. The exquisite chasteness of mien, and form of this flower, the contrast of its colors, and simplicity of attitude which it displays when springing from out its grassy tuft, can hardly be surpassed by any from another region. By its side peeps out the bright gleeful blue eyes of the little germander speedwell, in joyful gaiety—a lowly domestic plant that loves and seeks alliance with its kind, and in small family associations, by united splendor, decorates the foliage around. And there we find the stitch-wort, mingling her snowy bloom immaculately pure, with pallid green: too delicate to vegetate alone, it seeks the shelter of the hedge or copse, trembles when the breeze goes by, and seems an emblem of innocence and grace. And there the bright-flowered lotus with its pealike bloom, in social union glows as burnished gold, animating and gilding with its lustre all the tribes that spring near it; and fifty others, too, we note, which, though common and disregarded by reason of our familiarity with them, or expelled from favor by the novelty of far-fetched fair ones, deserve more attention than we are disposed to afford them. There are few plants which we look upon with more perfect contempt than that common product of every soil, the ‘dandelion.’[30] Every child knows it, and the little village groups which perambulate the hedges for the first offspring of the year, amuse themselves by hanging circlets of its stalks linked like a chain round their necks: yet if we examine this in all the stages of its growth, we shall pronounce it a beautiful production; and its blossom, though often a solitary one, is perhaps the very first that enlivens the sunny bank of the hedge in the opening year, peeping out from withered leaves, dry stalks, and desolation, as a herald, telling us that nature is not dead, but reposing, and will awaken to life again. And some of us, perhaps, can remember the pleasure it afforded us in early days, when we first noticed its golden blossoms under the southern shelter of the cottage hedge, thinking that the ‘winter was past,’ and that ‘the time of the singing of birds was come;’ and yet, possibly, when seen, it may renew some of that childish delight, though the fervor of expectation is cooled by experience and time. The form of this flower, with its ligulate petals many times doubled is elegant and perfect; the brightness and liveliness of the yellow, like the warm rays of an evening sun, are not exceeded in any blossom, native or foreign, that I know of; and this, having faded away, is succeeded by a head of down, which loosened from its receptacle, and floating in the breeze, comes sailing calmly along before us, freighted with a seed at its base; but so accurately adjusted is its buoyant power to the burden it bears, that steadily passing on its way, it rests at last in some cleft or cranny in the earth, preparatory to its period of germination, appearing more like a flight of animated creatures than the seed of a plant. This is a very beautiful appointment! but so common an event as hardly to be noticed by us; yet it accomplishes effectually the designs of nature, and plants the species at distances and in places that no other contrivance could so easily and fitly effect. The seeds, it is true, might have fallen and germinated around the parent plant, but this was not the purpose of nature; yet may seem to some a very unnecessary contrivance for the propagation of a common dandelion, whose benefits to mankind as a medicine, though retained in our pharmacopœias, and occasionally resorted to, seem of no great importance. Nor are we sensible that its virtues are essential to any portion of the creation; but this very circumstance should abate our pride, our assumed pretensions of knowledge, as we may be assured that its existence, though hidden from us, is required in the great scheme of nature, or such elaborate and sufficient contrivances for its continuation and increase would never have been called into action by Nature, who is so remarkably simple in all her actions, economical in her ways, and frugal of her means.

Some very extraordinary vegetable productions are now on the table before me. Though not gathered in this neighborhood, I am induced to give them a place with our notables, because I believe that they have not been noticed, and afford a strong example of the persevering endeavors that plants exert at times to maintain existence. One of these is the tufted head and entire roots of a grass, gathered from a down fed by sheep from time immemorial. It is probably that of the hard fescue (festuca duriuscula), which, having been constantly eaten down by cattle, has never thrown up flowering stems, giving out only radical leaves. These appear to have been cropped short, as soon as they have sprung up, the less succulent and strawy portions only being left, like a ball upon the surface, as a bush constantly clipped by the gardener’s shears. The root appears to have annually increased, though the upper parts it was destined to nourish have been destroyed, until it became a lock of closely compacted fibres, like a tuft of hair, six or eight inches in length. Furze bushes,[31] growing upon many downs in Wales, Devon, and Cornwall, assume commonly the appearance of large, green, dense balls, every tender leaf being constantly shorn away by the sheep and rabbits that frequent those places, and present, upon a larger scale, the very appearance of these grass balls. Our specimens are rather local than general, and were the produce of the Malvern hills.

The common brambles (rubus cæsius and fruticosus) may almost be considered as evergreens. Hedgers to be sure they are: but we have few, perhaps no other shrubby plant, naturally deciduous, excepting the privet, that will retain its verdure through the year, preserving, by a peculiar construction of its vessels, a portion of foliage unseared by frosts, and contending with gales that destroy and strip away all the honors of its neighbors. This circumstance enables us to observe a curious, strongly defined line upon the leaves, like a glossy whitish film, meandering over the surface, becoming progressively larger, with a fine intestinal-like line running through the centre. What occasioned this sinuous path long puzzled me satisfactorily to ascertain, considering it entirely of vegetable origin; and all the various polymorphous parasitics were successively thought of. At one time I deemed it like puccinia, which vegetates beneath the cuticle of leaves: but this was rejected; and probably I might long have wandered in error, had not the Rev. Mr. Kirby dissipated all my conjectures by informing me that it was the pathway of a small caterpillar. There are several species of them which are placed by Reaumur in a tribe called “mineuses,” all of which live upon the parenchyma, or pulpy substance found between the cuticles or skins of leaves, gradually increasing in size until matured for transformation to the chrysalis, when they eat their way through the leaf, ultimately becoming moths, remarkable for the brilliant metallic lustre of their wings, the fine central line being the rejectments of the creature in the infant stages of its growth. Though several plants afford sustenance to these races, we have none on which this tortuous path is more strongly defined than the leaves of brambles, and the ever-blowing rose. Notices of such incidents may perhaps be considered as too trifling to record; but the naturalist, from the habit of observing, sees many things not obvious to all persons: his province is to investigate all the operations of nature, and if he record them truly, he has done his duty; prolix and dull as his remarks will be to some, yet to another they may afford information, or tend to elucidate a conjecture. The bramble is a sadly reprobated plant, and I cannot say much in its favor as an independent individual, nor would I introduce it, to incommode by its society a thriving mound of white thorn or of crab: but it generally introduces itself, and will flourish greatly, where other and better fences languish, and then, by intertwining its long flexile runners with the weakly products of the hedge-row, will compose a guard, where without it we could with difficulty have raised one. It will intrude, however, into many places where it is not required, originating probably from the rejectments of birds, and become a very unwelcome and tenacious inhabitant. Its long tendrils are much used by us as binders for thatching, being pegged down to prevent the straw coverings of ricks and such things being carried away by the winds, and we are satisfied with its performances. By the assistance of the bramble also, the new-placed turf is secured on the graves of our poorer neighbors, until it unites and forms a uniform sod; and during this service it will occasionally root itself, and become an inhabitant not easily ejected from our church-yards. Badgers are said to feed much upon the fruit of the bramble. They are certainly very fat and fleshy about the time that the blackberry is ripe; but it is probable that the acorns and crabs, which it finds at the same season, contribute most to its nourishment.

The maple[32] (acer campestre) is found growing in all our fences, generally reduced by the hedger’s bill to serve the same humble purposes as the thorns and sloes associated with it. Sometimes, however, it is permitted to assume the rank of a tree, when, if not possessing dignity, it is certainly beautiful, and becomes an ornament in the hedge-row. It is the earliest sylvan beau that is weary of its summer suit; first shifting its dress to ochery shades, then trying a deeper tint, and lastly assuming an orange vest; thus setting a fashion that ere long becomes the garb of all except the rustic oak, which looks regardlessly at the beau, and keeps its verdant robe unchanged. Soon tired of this, the maple takes a pattern from his sober neighbor ash, throws its gaudy trim away, and patiently awaits with all his peers the next new change. In spring the woodbine wreathes its knots of green around the rugged limbs of the maple; the rose beneath puts on its emerald gems, and then our gallant sir will wear such colors too, fluttering through all its summer’s day. When first the maple begins to autumnize the grove, the extremities of the boughs alone change their color, but all the internal and more sheltered parts still retain their verdure, which gives to the tree the effect of a great depth of shade, and displays advantageously the light, lively coloring of the sprays. We find the maple useful in our hedges, not from the opposition it affords, but by reason of its very quick growth from the stool after it has been cut, whence it makes a fence in a shorter time than most of its companions; and when firewood is an object, it soon becomes sufficiently large for this purpose. The singular ruggedness of the branches and shoots when they have attained a year’s growth, and the depth of the furrows, give it a strongly marked character among our shrubs. The under side of the leaves in autumn, when they become yellow, and dashed here and there with a few specks of red and brown, appear, when magnified, like a very beautiful and perfect mosaic pavement, with all its tesseræ arranged and fitted. If one of these rugged young shoots be cut through horizontally with a sharp knife, its cork-like bark presents the figure of a star with five or more rays, sometimes irregularly, but generally exactly defined. A thin slice from the surface is a beautiful and curious object in the microscope, exhibiting the different channels, and variously formed tubes, through which the sap flows, and the air circulates for the supply of all the diversified requirements of the plant; and it is good and delightful to contemplate the wonderful mechanism that has been devised by the Almighty Architect, for the sustenance and particular necessities of the simple maple, this “ditch trumpery,” as Gilpin calls it; which naturally leads one to consider that, if he have so regarded such humble objects, how much more has he accounted worthy of his beneficence the more highly destined orders of his creation! As Evelyn says, on another occasion, “I beg no pardon for this application, but deplore my no better use of it.” Modern practice records no medicinal virtues to be derived from the maple; but Pliny, in the quaint language of old Philemon Holland, tells us that a cataplasm made from the roots of this tree is “singular to be applied for the griefs of the liver, and worketh mightily.” In summer the leaves of the hedge-row maple often assume a whitish, mouldy look, which appears to be a mere exudation, as it neither presents any after-character, nor have I observed that any thing results from it. The young leaves, soon after their appearance in the spring, are beset with numerous fine spines of a bright red color, most probably occasioned by the puncture of some insect, though I have never been able to discover any of the larvæ inclosed in them. Some insects wound the leaves and sprays of plants for nutriment, though generally the object seems to be the formation of a nidus for their young, by the fluid that issues from the wound: but insects do something more than merely puncturing the parts to force a liquor to exude; a simple wound will not accomplish the desired object, as the sap not only hardens on the surface, but acquires a particular form and consistence, and even at times enlarges to a separate vegetable matter. The insect that wounds the leaf of the oak, and occasions the formation of the gall-nut, and those which are likewise the cause of the apple rising on the sprays of the same tree, and those flower-like leaves on the buds have performed very different operations, either by the instrument that inflicted the wound, or by the injection of some fluid to influence the action of the parts. That extraordinary hairy excrescence on the wild rose (cynips rosæ), likewise the result of an insect’s wounds, resembles no other nidus required for such creatures that we know of; and these red spines on the leaf of the maple are different again from others. It is useless to inquire into causes of which we probably can obtain no certain result, but, judging by the effects produced by different agents, we must conclude, that, as particular birds require and fabricate from age to age very different receptacles for their young, and make choice of dissimilar materials, though each species has the same instruments to effect it, where, generally speaking, no sufficient reasons for such variety of forms and texture is obvious, so it is fitting that insects should be furnished with a variety of powers and means to accomplish their requirements, having wants more urgent, their nests being at times to be so constructed as to resist the influence of seasons, to contain the young for much longer periods, even occasionally to furnish a supply of food, or be a storehouse to afford it when wanted by the infant brood.