Part 14

II. Hairy Bird’s-foot Trefoil (L. hispidus). Annual, trailing stems, long and slender, covered with lax hairs. Pods twice the length of calyx. Banks near the sea from Hants to Cornwall. July and August. Rare.

III. Slender Bird’s-foot Trefoil (L. angustissimus). Similar to L. hispidus, but stems shorter and more slender. Pod four times the length of calyx. Similar situations as last, but extending as far eastward as Kent. Very rare.

=Common Vetch= (Vicia sativa). Plate 44.

The Vetches are Leguminous plants, and the structure of the flowers is therefore very similar to those just described. The Vetches are chiefly climbing plants, and have pinnate leaves. The leaflets are numerous, and the leaf-stalk is continued for some distance beyond the leafy portion, where it becomes a clasping tendril, often divided into three or four branches. The Common Vetch is to be found in hedges and roadsides near cornfields, flowering from April to June. The flowers are pale purple in colour, and are produced singly or in pairs from the axils of the leaves. By some authorities this is not considered a true species, but merely a cultivated form of the Narrow-leaved Vetch (V. angustifolia). The seed-pods are slightly hairy, and from two to three inches in length. The name Vicia is the term by which the plants were known to the ancients and appears to have the same origin as Vinca (see page 5).

Lotus corniculatus.

--LEGUMINOSÆ.--]

Vicia sativa.

--LEGUMINOSÆ.--]

There are no less than ten British species of Vicia, but as some of these are very rare, we shall refer only to some of the commoner kinds.

I. Slender Tare (V. tetrasperma). Stem very slender, about 2 feet in height. Flowers singly or in pairs, pale blue. Pods with three or four seeds. Hedges and cornfields. May to August.

II. Common Tare (V. hirsuta). Similar to foregoing species, but hairy. Flowers smaller, pods shorter, hairy, and containing two seeds only. In similar situations. These are both annuals.

III. Tufted Vetch (V. cracca). With creeping rootstock and angled stem, climbing or spreading; somewhat silky. The bright blue flowers are borne in a dense one-sided raceme, to the number of twenty or thirty. The pod is beaked, about an inch in length, and contains a large number of seeds. Hedges and bushy places. June to August. Perennial.

IV. Bitter Vetch (V. orobus). Leaves in seven to ten pairs of leaflets, without tendrils. Stem erect, branched, hairy. The flowers purplish-white, ten to twenty, in loose one-sided racemes. Pod pointed at each end, containing four or five seeds. Rocky and mountainous woods on the western side of Britain. May to September.

V. Wood Vetch (V. sylvatica). Perennial creeping rootstock. Stems, 3 to 6 feet, scrambling and trailing over bushes and undergrowth. Tendrils branched. Leaves beautifully divided into six or eight pairs of leaflets. Flowers white, streaked and veined with purple, and borne loosely in a one-sided raceme, to the number of eight to eighteen. A beautiful species, found only locally in woods at high elevation.

VI. Bush Vetch (V. sepium). Creeping perennial rootstock, giving off runners. Leaflets, six to eight pairs. Flowers, dull purple, four to six in a cluster, not on a long stalk as in the Wood Vetch, but from the axils of the leaves, as in the Common Vetch. May to September. In hedges and bushy places.

=The Duckweeds= (Lemna).

The Duckweeds--Shakespeare’s “Green mantle of the standing pool”--are plants that are well-known to everybody, and consequently very few persons know anything of them. This is a paradox; but they are so common and so small that the average man or woman is content to know them in the aggregate, and cannot condescend to a more intimate acquaintance with individuals, or with the different species, yet like many other small things--“unconsidered trifles”--they are very interesting to the botanist; for these are among the smallest and simplest of the flowering plants. Taking up two or three plants from one pond and comparing them with some from another piece of water, we shall probably find a difference in them; but they are all possessed of a more or less flattened green body that floats on the water, and which we shall be inclined to call a leaf. It is not a leaf, however, but a plant that produces no leaves, though it has roots and flowers. To be more accurate we will call it a frond, from whose under-surface there goes down one or more simple unbranched roots, and in clefts of whose margin are simple flowers. The flower consists of an envelope or spathe (see page 15), within which is a bottle-shaped pistil, with one or two stamens beside it. Some authorities contend that the pistil and each of the stamens is really a distinct flower similar to those in Arum. These flowers are so minute that they are rarely seen, and so are thought to flower only occasionally. The plant is chiefly multiplied by the production of new fronds from its edges. The four species figured give the whole of the genus, so far as Britain is concerned; but three others are known in foreign waters. The differences in the natives may be thus briefly enumerated:--

1. Lemna minor.

2. -- tisulca.

3. Lemna gibba.

4. -- polyrhiza.

--LEMNACEÆ.--]

Anthemis arvensis.

--COMPOSITÆ.--]

I. Least Duckweed (Lemna minor). The most frequent species. Frond not more than a quarter of an inch long, egg-shaped, the top flat and bright green, underside very pale green and slightly convex, with a single root. Spathe two-lipped, one much larger than the other. Stamens two, one maturing before the other; style long. Flowering in July.

II. Ivy-leaved Duckweed (L. trisulca). Frond thin and flat, nearly an inch long, tailed at one end, coarsely toothed at the other. New fronds emerge at right angles to the parent. Roots solitary. Stamens two; style short. June and July.

III. Thick-leaved Duckweed (L. gibba). Frond nearly round, narrowed at one end, large, almost flat, green opaque on top, greatly swollen beneath, whitish, clear, the cell-structure being very noticeable. Root solitary, stamens two. Flowers June to September.

IV. Great Duckweed (L. polyrhiza). At once distinguished from the others by its bunch of roots from each frond. Upper surface slightly convex, dark green with seven nerves. Underside purple, as also the upper margins. Stamens two. Flower has been rarely, if ever, seen in this country.