Part 11

It seems quite natural to use the two common names of this beautiful shrub at different times. In the spring, before a leaf has unrolled upon the spine-tipped spurs of its soot-coloured branches, we call it the Blackthorn, for by contrast with its pure white stars its thorns are black indeed. In the autumn, when we search the common, the copse-side and the thick hedgerow for ripe bramble fruit, we only know it as the Sloe. Then the plant is again in full beauty with its groups of round plums, each finely coated with the purple bloom that is ruined by a touch. Like the Whitethorn (page 17) and the Bramble (plate 30), the Blackthorn is a rose, with the floral organs in fives. The fruit is botanically a _drupe_: it is the result of a swelling up of the ovary, the outer walls of which become succulent and pulpy, the inner hardened into the “stone” inclosing the “kernel” or seed. The leaves are small, elliptical, finely toothed, and in a young state the underside is downy, but in the adult condition smooth. All the branches are spiny.

There are two forms with brown bark which have been at various times regarded as separate species, or as mere varieties, but which Sir J. D. Hooker ranks as sub-species, marking a stage in which varietal characters have become permanent, but not sufficiently strong to hide their connection with the parent form. These are:--

I. The Bullace (_P. insititia_), with larger and broader leaves, underside downy in the adult condition; branches straight, only a few with spines; the petals broader; the fruit more drooping, black or yellow, larger, and less rough to the taste.

II. Wild Plum (_P. domestica_). Branches straight without spines. Fruit larger, black. Leaves downy on the ribs of the underside. The plums of the fruiterer and the “prunes” of the grocer are cultivated forms of this species.

They all flower in March and April. The name is the old Latin appellation for the fruit.

=Wild Hop= (_Humulus lupulus_).

The Wild Hop may not unfrequently be seen in the copse and hedgerow, especially in the South of England. It has a thick branching perennial rootstock--in the cultivated plant called a “set”--from which are produced several long, thin, but tough twining stems that turn with the sun, and tightly clasp the nearest small tree or shrub. It has no tendrils like the vine, but climbs like the convolvulus by simply twining with the sun as it grows. Its lobed and coarsely toothed leaves are very similar to those of the grape-vine, but very rough. The leaves are in pairs, and at the base of the leaf-stalk is a pair of long curved stipules. The Hop is what botanists term a _diœcious_ plant, because staminate flowers only are produced by one individual, and pistillate only by another, making cross-fertilization imperative. It is not the insects, however, that effect this crossing in the Hop, but the wind. The flowers are all small; the staminate produced from the axils of the leaves in long drooping panicles. They have no petals, but there are five sepals and five anthers attached to their bases. Each pistillate flower has a membranous sepal, an ovary, and two long tapering purple stigmas. Two of these pistillate flowers are produced in the axil of a green, broad, concave bract or scale. A number of these twin-flowered bracts are united into a dense spike, and after fertilization this develops into a large cone-like head of yellow scales with resinous glands at their base, which yield a resinous substance called _lupuline_. The true fruit is a little nut, which is enclosed in the sepal under the bracts. It flowers in July and August. It is the only British species. Beside their extensive use in brewing, the flowers are frequently used to stuff pillows, their narcotic odour inducing sleep.

=The Salad Burnet= (_Poterium sanguisorba_).

When “cool tankards” were more generally compounded than they are to-day, Salad Burnet was a better-known plant, for, like Borage, it formed one of the ingredients. It was used also in the salad bowl, its leaves having a flavour very similar to that of cucumber. It is a perennial, the rosette of radical leaves springing from a stout rootstock. The leaves are all pinnate; the leaflets in pairs, coarsely toothed, and a terminal leaflet. The stems are slender, branched, and the flowers are gathered into a purplish head. They have no petals, and are of two kinds: the upper ones have a four-lobed calyx with a narrow mouth, from which two styles with brush-like stigmas are exserted; the lower bear both stamens and stigmas, or stamens only. The stamens are four in number, attached to the mouth of the calyx, and the anthers hang out. The plant may be found abundantly in dry pastures, especially in a chalk district, flowering from June till August.

The Rough Burnet (_P. muricatum_), found in cultivated fields in the Midlands and South of England, is probably only a variety of _sanguisorba_, owing its large size and roughness to the richer soil it finds in the fields.

The Great Burnet (_P. officinale_), was formerly regarded as constituting a separate genus, _Sanguisorba_, but it is very similar to the Salad Burnet. Its flowers, however, are all alike, and contain both stamens and pistils. It is much larger than Salad Burnet, and its flower-heads more cylindric, longer, and of a darker purple hue. The stamens, too, instead of hanging far outside the calyx, are no longer than the lobes of that organ. The flowers produce honey, and are fertilized by insects. The leaflets are fewer and longer in this species. Its habitat is damp meadows, and its flowering time the same as Salad Burnet.

The name _Poterium_ is the Latin term for a drinking-cup, in allusion to its use indicated above.

=Ivy= (_Hedera helix_).

How common is Ivy, whether wild or cultivated! Yet how few are acquainted with its flowers!

There is no occasion to say that the Ivy is an evergreen perennial climbing shrub, nor to describe the form of the beautiful leathery leaf. If there is one leaf that may be said to be thoroughly well known to every British man, woman, and child, it must be the Ivy, for it thrives in dark corners of towns as well as on the hedge-banks of the country, and its foliage has been so well used in all classes of ornamental work. And yet there are few leaves that are subject to such great variation of form, though, with all its changes, one dominant character runs through them all, except its upper leaves, which are totally unlike. The Holly has prickly leaves for its lower branches, but those that are above the heads of browsing cattle have “entire” margins. So with the Ivy; its five-lobed leaves are for its trailing and climbing branches, but when it has reached the top of the wall or the tree it puts on simple lance-shaped leaves, and in September or October crowns these shoots with its umbels of yellow-green flowers.

The flower consists of a calyx with five triangular teeth, petals and stamens five each, style one, with five obscure stigmas. The flowers are succeeded by blackish berries, sometimes yellow. There is a common woodland variety, with smaller, narrower leaves, that never flowers; neither do those forms that persistently trail along the hedge bottom instead of climbing. Ivy has been at various times condemned as causing dampness in the walls it covers; the exact converse is the truth. It is the only British species; the genus contains but two for the whole world.

=Arrowhead= (_Sagittaria sagittifolia_).

One of the most striking among the many forms of leaves that go to make up the vegetation of the sluggish stream or the canal is the aptly-named plant here figured.

It is a perennial, the leaves are radical, and from the base of the plant runners are thrown out, each ultimately terminating in a globose tuber. The leaves are typical of what botanists describe as a “sagittate” leaf, and their long stalks are three-edged. The stem is leafless, but bears a number of flowers in series of threes. These flowers are of two kinds, staminate and pistillate, and because, like those of _Poterium_, they are borne upon the same plant, botanists describe _Sagittaria_ as _monœcious_, just as they describe the Hop as _diœcious_, because its two sexes are on different plants. There are three sepals, and three large white petals with purplish spots at their base. The lower flowers contain carpels only, which are many in number, and which develop into a compact head of nut-like fruits. The stalks of these pistillate flowers are shorter than those of the staminate flowers above them, which contain purple anthers. It flowers from July to September, and is frequent in England as far north as Cumberland, as an indigenous plant; in Scotland it has become naturalized, and in Ireland it is of local occurrence. It is the only British species.

The name is from the Latin _sagitta_, an arrow.

=The Corn Sow-thistle= (_Sonchus arvensis_).

We were nearly remarking that the Sow-thistle is one of the most beautiful of our native flowers, but remembering that we have already applied that observation to several species, we will alter the formula and say it is among the most handsome. Certainly no one who sees it growing is likely to pass it by without plucking some of the flowers, though they will be disappointed in these flagging and losing their beauty before home is reached. We have three native species, of which this is undoubtedly the finest, the stem growing to a height of three or four (or, as we have found it in Surrey, over five) feet. It is a perennial, with a large creeping rootstock, which sends off runners. The stem is hollow, milky, and clasped by the bases of the finely cut leaves. These are deeply lobed, and edged with sharp teeth; the lower leaves have stalks, the upper have not. The unopened involucre--for this again is a Composite--will strike the finder as being singularly square; it is covered all over--as are the stems also-with short hairs with glandular tops of a golden yellow. The expanded flower-head is about two inches across, and is composed entirely of ray-florets. The plant will be found flowering in or around cultivated fields in August and September. The other British species are:--

I. Marsh Sow-thistle (_S. palustris_), now all but extinct, and found only rarely in the Eastern counties of England and Kent. It is taller-growing than _arvensis_, the stem sometimes reaching nine feet, but the flowers are only half the size of that species.

II. Common Sow-thistle (_S. oleraceus_). A common annual in every field and waste. General character of plant very similar to _arvensis_, but smaller. Stem, two to three feet in height, without (or rarely with) the glandular hairs. Flower-heads many, not exceeding an inch in diameter. June to September.

Name supposed to be derived from the Greek, _sonthos_, hollow, in reference to the fistular stems.

=Grass of Parnassus= (_Parnassia palustris_).

It is a singular thing that some of our most beautiful plants grow in the most unpleasant places. We remember a backwater of the River Thames that used to receive the waste waters from a large soap-works, and in the evening, when this waste was poured out, the stench arising from the ditch was unbearable. Yet, with its feet in this vile liquid, the Meadow-sweet grew luxuriantly, but truth compels us to add that its sweetness was thrown away; it could not overcome the other smell. Black bogs and mossy swamps are the particular haunts of floral beauties, such as the marsh violet, the bog buckbean, the marsh marigold, the bog pimpernel, the sundew, the bog asphodel; and it is in such resorts we must look for the Grass of Parnassus, a plant so pretty and elegant of form that it must first have grown upon Mount Parnassus. At any rate, the English name is a mere translation of that given to it by Dioscorides, among the six or seven hundred plants mentioned by him.

It is a perennial, with a stout rootstock. With few exceptions the leaves are radical; they are heart-shaped, smooth, with untoothed edges, and on long stalks. The flowering stems are long, angular, with a stalkless leaf nearly half-way up. At the summit is the solitary large flower. The fine thick sepals are slightly conjoined at their bases, the petals white, veined and leathery. The ovary is large, and on its summit, without the intervention of a style, are the four rayed stigmas. Around the ovary are five stamens--there should be ten, but five have been transformed into scales, which alternate with the perfect stamens, and are fringed with white hairs, each ending in a yellow knob; on the face nearest the ovary each scale bears two small honey-secreting glands. The perfect stamens ripen in succession, and as each becomes mature, it raises itself until the anther comes on top of the stigma, but with its back to it. The front opens and discharges the pollen away from the stigma; but it falls where insects seeking the honeyed glands (using the ovary as a perch) will get it upon their forelegs, and so attach it to the stigmas of the next flower they visit.

It flowers in August and September. This is the only British species.

=Oat-grass= (_Avena sativa_).

We have three British species of Wild Oat, but a knowledge of their structure and differences may be best obtained perhaps by a consideration of the cultivated Oat of our fields. It is indeed probable that the cereal oat is but a cultivated form of our Common Wild Oat (_A. fatua_), for Professor Buckman succeeded years ago in obtaining as the ninth generation from seeds of _A. fatua_ good crops of the farmers’ varieties called White Tartarian and Potato Oats. It is known that oats shed in harvesting often degenerate into the wild forms. As a cereal the Oat does not appear to be nearly so ancient as wheat and barley, for it was not cultivated by the Hebrews, the Egyptians, Greeks or Romans.

The genus is distinguished by having its flowers in a lax-panicle, the spikelets borne principally upon long, slender stalks. Each spikelet contains two or more flowers, of which the upper one is usually imperfect, and each is armed with a long twisted and bent awn. There are two outer glumes, each flowering glume deeply notched, the awn arising from the bottom of the notch. The pale is two-nerved, the scales two-toothed, the stamens three. The ovary has a hairy top and two short styles with feathery stigmas. The fruit adheres to the glume.

I. Wild Oat (_Avena fatua_). An annual with two- or three-flowered spikelets which droop at length. The empty glumes with nine nerves, flowering glumes covered with stiff hairs. Brown awn much bent, the lower half twisted. Leaves flat and roughish; sheaths smooth. Cornfields. June to August.

II. Narrow-leaved Oat (_A. pratensis_). Perennial; not to be sought in the place indicated by _pratensis_, as it is a plant of the moor and dry pasture. Spikelets half erect, six flowered. Leaves flat, or edges rolled inwards, smooth, hard and rigid. Lower sheaths rough. Flowering glume, rough. Awn only slightly bent. June and July.

III. Downy Oat (_A. pubescens_). Perennial. Spikelets half erect, two-flowered. Leaves flatter than _A. pratensis_, downy; sheaths very downy. Awns wider apart. Dry pastures. June and July.

The name is the old Latin term for oats and reeds.

=Mountain Ash or Rowan= (_Pyrus aucuparia_).

We have considered many members of the beautiful Rose family already, but we have now a representative of another branch of it--the Wild-Apple section. The fruit of the Mountain Ash is really a little apple. It has no relationship with the Ash (_Fraxinus_, _see_ page 135), but the mere resemblance of its pinnate leaves has won the name. It is a low tree, growing from twenty to forty feet in height. It flowers in May, the creamy white blossoms being grouped in a cyme. The leaf is divided pinnately into six, seven, or eight pairs of leaflets and a terminal odd one; each leaflet toothed, the mid-rib and nerves hairy. The calyx also is hairy. The flowers are succeeded by a cluster of bright scarlet tiny apples, with yellow flesh and a three-celled hard “core” or endocarp. These are ripe in September, and are eagerly sought after by birds--a fact of which advantage has been taken by bird-catchers of all times and places where the tree grows. It is used for the purpose of baiting their horse-hair springes, whence it has got the name of Fowler’s Service-tree, and in the principal European countries it bears a name of like import. Its folk-names in this country alone make a long list:--Quicken-tree, Quick-Beam, Wiggen, Whichen, or Witcher, Wild Ash, Wild Service, Rowan, Roan, or Roddan, Mountain Service, and other variations. Some of these names are reminders of its supposed protective powers against the machinations of witches and warlocks. “Witches have no power where there is Rowan-tree wood.”

Pyrus is the old Latin name for a pear-tree.

=Buckwheat= (_Polygonum fagopyrum_).

In the neighbourhood of manure-heaps and on the borders of cultivated ground one may come across this plant, which was formerly included in the British Flora, but is now known to be a mere waif of cultivation. Its home is in Central Asia, but it has been so long cultivated as a food-plant in Europe and in the United States that it has become naturalized in most places. In this country it is chiefly grown as a food for pheasants. It is an annual, with a tall, slender, branched, reddish stem, and heart-shaped, almost arrow-headed leaves with entire margins. Flowers in panicles. The individual blossoms consist of five pale reddish sepals, no petals, eight stamens, and three styles. The flowers are of two forms, one with long stamens and short styles; the other with short stamens and long styles. The fruit is large, three-sided, solitary in a nut, very like beech-mast, whence its folk-name _buch_- or buck-wheat. It will be noted that at the base of the leaf-stalk is a pair of thin stipules, which sheathe the stem and mark the swollen nodes that give the knotted appearance so characteristic of the genus, and which has given it the name of many knees or joints (Greek _polus_ and _gonu_). Buckwheat flowers during July and August. It is a valuable honey-plant, esteemed of bee-masters. There are a dozen British species; among them:--

I. Bistort or Snake-root (_P. bistorta_). Perennial, with large twisted rootstock. Radical leaves long, egg-shaped, the upper part of the leaf-stalk winged. Stem-leaves almost stalkless, broader near the stem. Flowers pink or white, producing honey; moist meadows. June to September.

II. Amphibious Buckwheat (_P. amphibium_). Perennial, rootstock sometimes creeping in the ground, at others floating in the water. If the plant is floating the leaves have long stalks; if growing on land they are almost stalkless. Stipules tubular, large, smooth in water, bristly on land. Stamens five, styles two. Flowers, rosy-red. July and August; margins of pools and in other wet places.

III. Spotted Knotweed (_P. persicaria_). Annual. Stem erect; leaves long, narrowly lance-shaped, with a black heart-shaped patch in the centre, downy beneath; the stipules fringed with a few long hairs. Flowers flesh-coloured; stamens six, styles two. July to October, in moist places.

IV. Knotgrass (_P. aviculare_). Annual. Stems branching from the root, very slender and straggling, smooth. The leaves small and grassy, stipules small, white, torn-looking, red at the base. Flowers very small in the axils, pink. Stamens eight, styles three. Waste places and neglected gardens. May till October. The seeds are much esteemed by birds, and to the entomologist the fresh plant is invaluable as an almost universal food for the caterpillars of geometers.

V. Black Bindweed (_P. convolvulus_). Annual, with twining stems. The leaves are very similar to those of the true Convolvulus, the lobes more pointed; stipules short. Sepals green, with paler margins. Fields and wastes. July to September.

=Fool’s Parsley= (_Æthusa cynapium_).

Fool’s Parsley is fond of cultivated ground, and it is no unusual thing for it to make its appearance in the very garden beds that have been set apart for rearing that pot-herb for which fools are said to mistake it. It is an annual, with a spindle-shaped, fleshy root, round, hollow stem, branched, and marked with fine longitudinal lines. The leaves are smooth, compound, and bluish green in tint. The wedge-shaped leaflets are themselves pinnate, and the pinnæ are lobed. The flowers are small and irregular, white, grouped in small umbels, which are again gathered into large umbels of umbels.

The reader is invited to turn back to page 55, where the structure of umbelliferous flowers and fruits is more intimately described. The small umbels in _Æthusa_ are provided with an involucre consisting of three or five little bracts, very narrow and hanging vertically. This feature will serve to distinguish _Æthusa_ from all other umbellifers. The entire plant is evil-smelling, and said to be poisonous. It flowers during July and August, and is the only species. It gets its generic name from the Greek _aitho_, to burn, from its acrid character, and its specific name is a combination of _Kynos_, dog, and _apion_, parsley, which is a further note of its worthless character.

=Fine-leaved Heath= (_Erica cinerea_).

This is the common Purple Heath of our elevated heaths and commons, distinguished from its relatives by its smooth stems and leaves; the latter exceedingly narrow, their edges curled under, and arranged around the stems in whorls of three leaves, with clusters of minute leaves in their axils. The flowers also are in whorls, and either horizontal or drooping. The sepals are four in number, green; the corolla in one, egg-shaped, with four short lobes around the mouth. The stamens are eight, bearing two-celled crested anthers, each cell opening at the side to discharge its pollen, and having a toothed process at its base; the cell-openings of one anther being pressed against those of neighbouring anthers. The style is dilated at the top, and its surface is the stigma. Flowers July to September.

Another common species is