Part 20

The name of the genus is from the Latin, potens, powerful, some of the species having formerly considerable reputation as medicines.

=Small Bindweed= (Convolvulus arvensis).

With the appearance of the delicately fragrant Bindweed in our fields the season for summer flowers may be said to have fairly set in. Its grace of form and colour makes it a general favourite, but it resents being plucked, and closes its pink cups almost immediately. It has a perennial rootstock, which creeps and branches underground, taking possession of much soil, and sending up many slender twining stems clothed with spear-shaped leaves. The sepals are five in number, but the petals are entirely united to form a funnel-shaped corolla; though the five folds and lobes indicate the origin of the funnel. The flowers are honeyed, and are much frequented by long-tongued insects, which have to push against the anthers in order to reach the honey, carrying away pollen with which to fertilize another flower. Like a careful, thrifty plant the Bindweed closes in wet weather, and at night, that its honey may not be reduced in quality. It flowers from June to September.

Potentilla anserina.

--ROSACEÆ.--]

Convolvulus arvensis.

--CONVOLVULACEÆ.--]

The Hooded Bindweed (C. sepium) is one of the most distinguished of our wild flowers, and it is almost impossible to see its large, pure white flowers ornamenting the hedge without desiring to acquire them. In general form it is like C. arvensis, but very much larger. Instead of being content to twine among low-growing herbs as that species, it climbs up the thickets to a height of 6 or 7 feet. In addition to the calyx this species has an enveloping pair of large inflated heart-shaped bracts--the “hood” of its popular name. The rootstock is thick and tuberous. Though it possesses honey it is not odorous, and appears to be, in consequence, but little visited by insects; it is, therefore, careless of the quality of its honey, and does not close its flowers in the rain, nor on moonlight nights, though it does so on dark nights. Sometimes the flowers are tinged or streaked with pink. Flowers June to August.

There is a third native species, the Seaside Convolvulus (C. soldanella), which does not twine, or but rarely. It has a long creeping rhizome, slender stems, and fleshy, kidney-shaped leaves. Its large rosy flowers are not numerous. There are two bracts, as in C. sepium, but they are smaller than the unequal sepals. It may frequently be found on sandy shores, and flowers from June to August.

=The Greater Celandine= (Chelidonium majus).

We have already described (page 6 ante) a plant bearing the name of Lesser Celandine, and we would at once warn the reader that the Greater Celandine is not even distantly related to the Lesser. Here is an illustration of the dangers that arise from dependence upon the folk-names of plants and animals. The novice would reasonably assume that the Lesser and the Greater Celandines differed only in point of size, whereas the resemblance that struck our forefathers appears to have consisted merely in both plants being in flower what time the swallow (Chelidon) returns to our shores. Chelidonium majus is really a kind of poppy, whilst Ranunculus ficaria is a buttercup.

There is only one British species of Chelidonium, a perennial plant, with erect branching stems. The true poppies have a milky juice: this plant, like the Welsh-poppy (Meconopsis), and the Horned-poppy (Glaucium) has a yellow juice. The leaf is much divided, the leaflets deeply lobed, with somewhat of a resemblance to an oak-leaf. The rather small yellow flowers are combined in umbels, borne on a long stalk, to be out of the way of the somewhat erect leaves. There are two sepals and four petals, as in Papaver, but the fruit, instead of being an urn-like capsule as in that genus, is a long pod with two valves, which separate from the base upwards.

It is a plant of the hedgerow and waste ground, where it may be found in flower from May to August. The yellow juice, which is very acrid and poisonous, had formerly a reputation as an eye medicine, and as a caustic for the burning away of warts.

=Ragged Robin= (Lychnis flos-cuculi).

Like the Celandines, this plant was known to our fathers as a Cuckoo-flower; in fact, in many parts of the country its name is still “Cuckoo-flower,” but as that title is also given to the Ladies’-smock confusion is caused by its use. It is one of the Campions, a genus of graceful plants that is included in the Natural Order of the Pinks (Caryophylleæ).

The habit of the plant will suggest the Stitchwort, to which it is not very distantly related. It is a perennial plant, delighting in moist places, whether wet meadows, ditch banks or bogs. The leaves that spring directly from the slender rootstock are stalked; those on the reddish stem are not. The calyx is dark red, with purple veins; the rosy petals cut into four eccentric narrow segments. The flowers produce honey, and the stamens come to maturity before the stigmas, thus favouring cross-fertilization. Flowers May to August.

Chelidonium majus.

--PAPAVERACEÆ.--]

Lychnis flos-cuculi.

--CARYOPHYLLEÆ.--]

There is another common rosy-flowered Lychnis that occurs in somewhat similar situations. This is:--

The Red Campion (Lychnis diurna), with stem covered with soft hairs, which are sticky near the upper part of the plant. The flower has a singularly neat appearance, altogether lacking the ragged character of flos-cuculi. The petals, instead of being deeply cut, as in that species, are merely divided into two lobes. The calyx is reddish, with triangular teeth. The anthers and stigmas are produced in separate flowers; occasionally flowers may be found with both organs, but one or the other will be undeveloped.

The Red Campion is a plant of the hedge-bank and the copse, where it may be found in flower from June to September. In Cornwall it keeps fully in flower till the end of the year. This page was written there a few days before Christmas, when the fern-clad rocky hedgerows were lit up with great numbers of the flowers of Red Campion and Herb-Robert.

The name Lychnis is from the Greek, Luchnos, a lamp or torch, the application of which is obscure.

=Bluebottle or Cornflower= (Centaurea cyanus).

The Centaureas are closely allied to the thistles, and share with them that hard-headedness which makes the thistle so good a type of the canny Scot. The Bluebottle must not be sought in the company of the thistles on wastes and in neglected corners of pasture, but, as one of its folk-names indicates, in the cornfield. Beginning to flower in June, it keeps up the display of bright blue until the reapers cut it down.

Bluebottle is a composite flower, and it should afford interest to the reader, when he finds the blossoms, to institute a comparison between it and that of the Daisy or other of the Composites we have already described.

The thin stem is but slightly branched, and the long lower leaves are much cut up and very attenuated. Nearer the summit of the stems the leaves are simpler, and reduced to a very slight width. The stems and the under sides of the leaves are covered with loose cottony fibres. The flower-heads have for involucre a number of greenish scales, with toothed brown margins. The ray-florets are bright blue, their free ends divided into five teeth; the inner or disc-florets are much darker. The stamens are irritable, and if touched withdraw into the tube.