Part 30

The green leaves of the Mallow are very pretty. They are shaped like a hand with five blunt points, and the edges all round are cut into delicate teeth.

Those leaves which grow close to the root have often a deep purple blotch near the centre.

PLATE XXXIII: 1. SCOTCH THISTLE 2. MARSH PLUME THISTLE 3. FIELD SCABIOUS

1. SCOTCH THISTLE

This Thistle is very well known, particularly in Scotland, where it is the national flower. It blooms in late summer and autumn.

The stem of the Scotch Thistle is very stiff and straight, with 'wings' at each side. These wings are pale green flaps edged with very sharp points, and they run from top to bottom of the stem. The stem itself is white and woolly.

The Thistle flowers are a dull purple colour, and grow in a dense head, forty or fifty of them closely packed together. If you pick to pieces one of these heads, you will find that it is made up of many purple tubes which are edged with five purple teeth. The foot of each tube is enclosed in a covering of dingy yellow down.

When you have a great many of these flowers growing close together in a head, the under part looks like a bundle of woolly down.

Below this down bundle you find a prickly green covering, in which there are dozens of narrow green leaves. Each leaf ends in a sharp point, and it is this prickly green covering which makes the Thistle such a difficult flower to gather.

The leaves have very sharp points at the edges. They are dark green, and are thinly covered with beautiful grey down. The young leaves are entirely white and woolly until they open.

2. MARSH PLUME THISTLE

The Plume Thistle is very common all over Britain. It grows during summer in bogs and in wet places by the roadside.

This tall, thin plant is not nearly so attractive as the Scotch Thistle.

The flowers grow in heads which contain a great many dull purple flowers crowded together in one bundle. These heads do not grow singly as in the Scotch Thistle. You will find three or four close together at the end of the main stem, and there is usually one head of flowers much further out than the others.

The green covering which protects the lower part of the flowers and binds them together is not hard and prickly as in the Scotch Thistle. When you pick this covering to pieces you find that it is filled with woolly down.

The stem of the Marsh Plume Thistle is stiff and straight, and it has green wings with very sharp prickles up each side.

The leaves are long and narrow, and they are edged with sharp points. Each leaf is dark green above, but underneath it is covered with white down.

3. FIELD SCABIOUS

This pretty plant is common over most of Britain. You find it on dry banks and by the edge of fields, and it blooms all summer and autumn.

The flowers are very interesting. They grow in a bouquet which contains many flowers crowded together at the end of a stout stalk.

The centre flowers are a reddish pink colour, and have many tall yellow-headed stamens standing up beyond them. The petals of these flowers are joined together into a tube which is unevenly divided round the mouth. If you open the tube gently, you will find that the stamens are clinging to the inside.

Outside these pinky flowers there is a border of purply-blue tube-flowers, and these are much larger than the group in the centre. At the mouth of each tube there is a purple strap, and these straps stand out like a frill round the bouquet.

Behind these flowers there is a double row of small pointed green leaves.

The stem leaves are shaped like a feather, and they have long narrow fingers growing up each side of a centre stalk. There is always a solitary finger at the end of the stalk, and each finger is covered with soft hairs.

PLATE XXXIV: 1. COMMON LING OR HEATHER. 2. BLACK KNAPWEED. 3. WILD THYME.

1. COMMON LING OR HEATHER

The Heather is so well known that it scarcely requires any description. It grows on moors and commons and mountain-sides in England, Scotland and Ireland, and in autumn you will find it covering the ground like a carpet, sometimes growing in bushes as high as your knee.

The flowers of the Heather are very tiny, and they vary in colour from a pale pink to a deep purple. These flowers grow in spikes near the end of thin woody stems, and each flower has a very short stalk which droops slightly. The small flowers are bell-shaped, with the mouth of the bell deeply divided into four parts. Outside this purple bell there is a calyx made up of four purple pink sepals. These sepals are much longer than the petals, and they are very crisp and dry, like tissue paper. There is a double row of tiny green pointed leaves, clasping the bottom of the purple flowers. At first you might mistake these for sepals, but they have a different name, which you will learn some day.