Part 9

The wild clematis, or traveller’s joy (clematis vitalba), thrives greatly in some of the dry stony parts of our parish, insinuating its roots into the clefts and passages of our limestone rocks, where those of many other plants could not find admission or support; and forms in our hedge-rows a heavy shapeless mass of runners and branches, encumbering and overpowering its neighbors; many of which it often destroys; and we see the clematis clinging round a few stinted, half- vegetating thorns, constituting the only fence, miserable as it is. The runners or branches are very strong and flexile, and are much used by our peasantry as a binding for hedge fagots. The tubes, lymph ducts, and air-vessels of this plant appear in a common magnifier beautifully arranged, being large, and admitting the air freely to circulate through them. Our village boys avail themselves of this circumstance, cut off a long joint from a dry branch, light it, and running about, use it as their seniors do the tobacco-pipe. They call it “smoke wood,” and the action of the breath constantly agitating the fire, it will long continue kindled. The pores are well seen by drawing some bright colored liquor into them. I have often observed the long feathered part of the seed at the entrance of holes made by mice on the banks, and probably in hard seasons the seed may yield these creatures part of their supply. The diversity of form and arrangement in the pores of the roots, stems, and branches of plants, and the nerves, air-vessels, and fibres of the leaves, are extremely wonderful and beautiful; and it is possible that all the genera, species, and varieties, have more or less a different conformation of some of these parts. It is from the agency of these vessels, imbibing both from the air and the earth, compounding, decomposing, and discharging, in a way we know little about, that the sweetness of our fruits, the oil, the bread, and wine to glad the heart of man, proceed; and grateful should we be for them. From the vegetable world man derives his chief enjoyments: much of his fuel, most of his food, and the chief of his clothing, have once circulated in the tubes of a plant. The clematis plant possesses the power of preserving its verdure, and even thriving, in situations and seasons, when most other shrubby vegetation fails or languishes. With us its roots run amid loose stones, and in rocky places, far from any spring or apparent moisture; and yet, in those uncommonly dry summers of 1825 and 1826, it seemed to flourish with more than usual vigor throwing out its long tendrils, of a fine healthy green color, adorned with a profusion of blossoms, itself and the bramble being in some places the only thriving vegetation in a fence. It is marvellous how fibrous-rooted vegetables, the roots of which penetrate no depth into the soil, are enabled in some seasons to preserve any appearance of verdure, the earth they are fixed in seeming divested of all moisture by the power of the sun, and being heated like a sand-bath. The warmth of the earth in 1825 I omitted to record; but in the following year, which was more dry, and nearly as hot, the thermometer buried in the earth to the depth of three inches, in a flower border where many plants were growing in that sort of languid state which they present in such exhausting seasons, indicated the heat of 110°.

Having said thus much of the clematis, the “withywind” of our peasantry, it must not be supposed that I advocate the advantages of this plant as a fence, but only tolerate it where we cannot induce much else to thrive, it making something of a boundary line; and perhaps that is all, for very frequently its numerous tendrils, and the downy clusters of its caudated seeds are so interwoven, that the snow accumulates upon the bush, and presses the whole to the earth, so that in the spring we commonly find a gap to be repaired where the clematis has thriven. About February, or towards the end of winter, this plant becomes stripped of its feathery seeds, which is accomplished by mice, I believe the harvest and the long-tailed one (mus sylvaticus) principally; with these they form nest-like beds in the upper and thickest part of the hedge, resorting to them in the day-time, where they enjoy in tolerable safety the air and warmth of the season, in preference to their cold and damp apartments in the earth, and I have occasionally disturbed them in their dormitories; but at this time it is not observed that the seeds are much fed upon by them, and probably are only collected as shelter in a temporary dwelling.

The little excursions of the naturalist, from habit and from acquirement, become a scene of constant observation and remark. The insect that crawls, the note of the bird, the plant that flowers, or the vernal green leaf that peeps out, engages his attention, is recognized as an intimate, or noted from some novelty that it presents in sound or aspect. Every season has its peculiar product, and is pleasing or admirable, from causes that variously affect our different temperaments or dispositions; but there are accompaniments in an autumnal morning’s woodland walk, that call for all our notice and admiration: the peculiar feeling of the air, and the solemn grandeur of the scene around us, dispose the mind to contemplation and remark; there is a silence in which we hear every thing, a beauty that will be observed. The stump of an old oak is a very landscape, with rugged alpine steeps bursting through forests of verdant mosses, with some pale, denuded, branchless lichen, like a scathed oak, creeping up the sides or crowning the summit. Rambling with unfettered grace, the tendrils of the briony (tamus communis) festoon with its brilliant berries, green, yellow, red, the slender sprigs of the hazel, or the thorn; it ornaments their plainness, and receives a support its own feebleness denies. The agaric, with all its hues, its shades, its elegant variety of forms, expands its cone sprinkled with the freshness of the morning; a transient fair, a child of decay, that “sprang up in a night, and will perish in a night.” The squirrel, agile with life and timidity, gamboling round the root of an ancient beech, its base overgrown with the dewberry (rubus cæsius), blue with unsullied fruit, impeded in his frolic sports, half angry, darts up the silvery bole again, to peep and wonder at the strange intruder on his haunts. The jay springs up, and, screaming, tells of danger to her brood; the noisy tribe repeat the call, are hushed, and leave us; the loud laugh of the woodpecker, joyous and vacant; the hammering of the nuthatch (sitta europæa), cleaving its prize in the chink of some dry bough; the humblebee, torpid on the disk of the purple thistle, just lifts a limb to pray forbearance of injury, to ask for peace, and bid us

“Leave him, leave him to repose.”

The cinquefoil, or the vetch, with one lingering bloom yet appears, and we note it from its loneliness. Spreading on the light foliage of the fern, dry and mature, the spider has fixed her toils, and motionless in the midst watches her expected prey, every thread and mesh beaded with dew, trembling with the zephyr’s breath. Then falls the “sere and yellow leaf,” parting from its spray without a breeze tinkling in the boughs, and rustling scarce audibly along, rests at our feet, and tells us that we part too. All these are distinctive symbols of the season, marked in the silence and sobriety of the hour; and form, perhaps, a deeper impression on the mind, than any afforded by the verdant promises, the vivacities of spring, or the gay, profuse luxuriance of summer.

Such notes as these, such passing observations, are perhaps little fitted for, or deserving of, arrangement, yet, in a woodland autumnal ramble, we are naturally almost irresistibly, led to contemplate that beautiful and varied race of vegetation included under the name of fungi, so particularly fostered by this season, and which so greatly delight to spring up in sylvan moisture and decay: nor is there perhaps any country better constituted for the production of the whole of this family than England is, particularly that portion of them denominated agarics.[33] The various natures of our soil and pastures, the profusion of our woods and copses, the humidity of our climate, united with the general warmth of our autumn, accelerating rapid decay, and putrescence of vegetable matter, all combine to give existence to this race. No county is, I believe, more favored for the production of most of the kinds than Monmouth, with its deep dark woods, and alpine downs. A residence in that portion of the kingdom for some years introduced to my notice a larger portion of this singular race than every botanist is acquainted with. A sportsman then, but I fear I shall be called a recreant brother of the craft, when I own having more than once let my woodcock escape, to secure and bear away some of these fair but perishable children of the groves. Travellers tell us of the splendor of this race in the jungles of Madagascar, but nothing surely can exceed the beauty of some old copse in Monmouthshire, deep in the valley, calm, serene, shaded by the pensile, elegant, autumnal-tinted sprays of the birch, the ground enamelled with every colored agaric, from the deep scarlet to pallid white, the gentle gray, and sober brown, and all their intermediate shadings. Fungi must be considered as an appendage and ornament of autumn; they are not generally in healthy splendor until fostered by the evening damps and dews of September, and in this season no part of the vegetable world can exceed them in elegance of form, and gentleness of fabrication: but these fragile children of the earth are beauties of an hour:

“Transient as the morning dew, They glitter and exhale,”

and must be viewed before advancing age changes all their features. There is a pale gray fungus (agaricus fimiputris) that may very commonly be observed in September on the edges of heaps of manure, and in pasture grounds, most beautifully delicate, almost like colored water just congealed, trembling in the air from the slightness of its form, its sober tints softly blending with each other, lined and penciled with an exactitude and lightness that defy imitation. The verdigris agaric (agaricus æruginosus) is found under tall hedge-rows, and near shady banks, and few can exceed it in beauty when just risen from its mossy bed in all the freshness of morning and of youth, its pale green-blue head varnished with the moisture of an autumnal day; the veil, irregularly festooned around its margin, glittering like a circlet of emeralds and topazes from the reflected colors of the pileus. But it is by examination alone that the beauties of this despised race can be perceived, not by a partial and inadequate description.

The certain appearance of many of the fungi can by no means be relied upon, they being as irregular in their visits as some of the lepidopterous class of insects. It is probable that decayed vegetable matter is in most cases the source whence this race of plants arises, while a certain degree of moisture and temperature, acting in concord with a precise state of decay, appears necessary to influence the sprouting of the seminal or radical matter. The beautiful floriform hydnum (hydnum floriforme) is very irregular in its appearance, whence it is a species seldom found by the botanist. The mitred helvella (helvella mitra) will abound, and then years may intervene and not a specimen be discovered. In 1825, a little, gray puff ball (lycoperdon cinereum), about the size of a large pin’s head, abounded, covering patches of grass in all our fields, looking like froth, and in decay, when discharging its seed, like a spongy curd; though it had not been observed, not having vegetated, or very sparingly, for upwards of ten years. Others again, particularly the ligneous ones, remain permanently fixed for a long period. The fingered clavaria (clavaria hypoxylon) may be found vegetating on the stump of an old hazel in the orchard for twenty years in succession. That this elegant race has attracted so few votaries many reasons may be assigned. The agarics in particular are very versatile in their nature, and we frequently want an obvious, permanent character, to indicate the species, affording sufficient conviction of the individual. The rapid powers of vegetation in some will change the form and hues almost before a delineation can be made, or an examination take place, requiring nearly a residence with them to become acquainted with their various mutations; and we have no method of preserving them to answer the purpose of comparison. These are all serious impediments to the investigation of this class; yet, perhaps, I may with some confidence suggest, that any one, who is so circumstanced as to afford the time, so situated as to find a supply of these productions, and will bestow on them a patient examination, will find both pleasure and gratification in contemplating the beauty, the mechanism, the forms, the attitudes, of the whole order of fungi.

As far as we can observe, it appears to be an established ordinance of nature, that all created things must have a final period. This mandate is effected by various means, slow and nearly imperceptible in some cases, but operative in all. As in the animal world, after disease or violence has extinguished life, the dispersion is accomplished by the agency principally of other animals, or animated creatures; so, in the vegetable world, vegetating substances usually effect the entire decomposition: for though, in the larger kinds, the high and lofty ones of the forest, insects are often the primary agents, yet other minute substances are commonly found to accelerate or complete the dissolution. Fungi in general, particularly those arranged as sphæria, trichia, peziza, and boletus, appear as the principal and most numerous agents, and we find them almost universally on substances in a certain state of decay, or approximation to it; though there are a few genera of this class which are attached to, and flourish on, living vegetation. The primary decline is possibly occasioned by putrescence of the sap, or defective circulation, and this unhealthy state of the plant affording the suitable soil for the germination of the parasitic fungus; for there must be an original though inert seed, till these circumstances vivify its principle. By what means the parasite finishes the dissolution is not quite obvious; but of that insidious race the byssi, of which family is the dry-rot (byssus septica), the radicals penetrate like the finest hairs into the substance, and thus destroy the cohesion of the fibres. So do the nidulariæ, many of the agarics, the boleti, and others; and it is not unlikely that this operation is the general principle of action of the whole race, though not so obvious in the minuter kinds. These terminators, many of which present but little character to the naked eye, under the microscope we find to be of various forms, though not always so distinguishable from each other as the flowers of our garden. Some of the genera of plants appear to have distinct agents assigned to them, and the detection and enumeration of them have been carried to considerable extent by some of the foreign naturalists; but, to point out the variety and curious organization of these substances, we will only instance four, to be found on the common plants of the garden or the copse: the laurel, the elm, the sycamore, and the beech.

The laurel (prunus laurocerasus) is not, properly speaking, a deciduous plant, though it casts its leaves in considerable numbers during the spring and summer seasons. These long resist the common agents of dissolution, like those of the holly, by means of the impenetrable varnish that is spread over them. This, however, wears off, and they decay; but their destruction is at times accelerated by a small excrescent substance, which fixes on the leaf, breaks the surface, and admits humidity. It appears in the form of a small black speck, and, when ripe, discharges a yellow powder from the centre; but as soon as one speck, which is the vessel containing the capsules, has fixed itself on one side of the leaf, a similar one will be found immediately opposite on the other; and hence it is well named by Lamarck the two- fronted uredo (uredo bifrons).[34] This I believe to be peculiar to the laurel and the holly.

The leaf of the elm in autumn may commonly be observed marked with dark- colored blotches, which are the “plague spot” of its destruction. These leaves remain in large proportions uninjured through the winter months; but when spring arrives, the spots become matured, the surface cracks, and the capsules discharge their seeds. Lamarck names it sphæria xylomoides, but mentions another as a more early observer. At these spots the decay of the leaf generally commences.

Most persons must have observed that the upper surface of the leaves of the sycamore (acer pseudo-platanus) is blotched with dark-colored spots (xyloma acerinum) in autumn. This leaf is detached by the earliest frosts, and falling to the ground the spots commence their operations by corroding away the portions of the leaf that surrounds them, but continue attached themselves, appearing as raised, shining, vermicular lines. This has been mentioned by Lamarck and others, and is only now noticed to point out the variously constituted agents that accomplish the destruction of the foliage of plants.

The bark, the wood, have other deputed powers of destruction, many of which are very beautifully fabricated. To dwell on them would extend too much these remarks, designed rather as observations than details; yet I am tempted to introduce two. The sphæria coryli of Lamarck (peziza coryli) is occasionally to be found in the month of January, and through the winter until April, upon old hazel sticks, and engages our attention by the regularity of its tubercles. The seed, or first principle of production, whatever this may be, by means unknown to us, has been fixed upon the inner bark of the wood. Gently increasing, it bursts its way through the outer bark, which now hangs as a fringe about it; the seed vessels expand, and a dusty substance, being most probably the matter that continues the species, is dispersed around. A singular plant (sphæria faginea?) is found upon the decayed wood of the beech-tree,[35] in the earlier part of the spring. It appears on the surface of it in little nodules, which, gradually uniting and increasing, form a regular black crust. Upon examination we find, that little round bodies have forced a passage through the outer bark, and enlarged into small round tubes, which ultimately become the conductors of the seminal dust, discharged from round, beaked seed vessels, embedded beneath upon the inner bark. This plant presents us with a very remarkable instance of the attention of nature to the preservation of minute and little observed things; the protection of the seed vessel, and the dissemination, being most particularly and carefully provided for.

These specimens are only individuals among hundreds, which present us with a world of beauty, variety, and wonder. I would not wish it to be understood that it is maintained, by any thing here intimated, that the dissolution of vegetable matter is effected solely by the agency of insects or parasitic plants, Nature having various ways of accomplishing her purposes; but only mean to contend that, in numerous cases, these weak instruments are made use of to accelerate the decay and dispersion of it.

We are not favorably circumstanced for any great abundance of the race of fungi: the old fir grove—which produces such varieties, and the oak and birch copses, which have shed their leaves for ages, and given rise to many, are not found with us; yet we have a small scattering too, some of which are perhaps not undeserving of notice; and, though rather partial to a class which has afforded me many hours of gratification and delight, yet, sensible of the little interest they generally create, I must limit my mention to a very few.

The odorous agaric (agaricus odorus) may perhaps be locally found in plenty, but to me it has always been a plant of rare occurrence. Its colors are delicate and modest, rather than splendid, and a near acquaintance only makes us sensible of the justness of its name. We have another scented agaric (agaricus fragrans), much more commonly to be met with, which diffuses its fragrance to some distance: but the former species does not spread its fragrance until brought into a temperate apartment, when it fills the room with an odor like that proceeding from the heliotrope, or from fresh bitter almonds, and communicates it to our gloves, or whatever it touches. I have found it sparingly here among dry beech leaves in Wolf-ridge copse.

There is a rare, local, and I believe unnoticed agaric, trailing its long roots in October among the small decayed fragments of some old hedge, elegant in itself, but more remarkable from the colored fluid it contains, which upon being wounded it emits, not as a milky fluid, but like an orange-colored, tasteless, spirituous extract, long retaining its color upon paper, and tingeing the hand like the celandine, or blood-wort, (sanguinalis canadensis); and hence I have called it a “stainer.” Every part discharges this ichor, but it flows rather more copiously from the roots: in general appearance like A. varius. It may possibly be passed over as that species; but this is a race which being local, precarious, mutable, or fugacious, is seen by the wandering naturalist alone, and we must leave these mysterious but beautiful productions of nature to their solitudes and woods.[36]