Part 26

=Mercury Goosefoot= (Chenopodium bonus-henricus).

The genus to which this plant belongs consists of thorough weeds. Their habitat is waste places, usually where the soil is made up of man’s refuse. The plants are fairly uniform in colour, from stem to leaf and flower. They are fertilized by the wind, so they have no need to put on showy colours to attract insects. The flowers are small, and the petals are entirely wanting; they consist of from three to five sepals, from two to five stamens ranged around the ovary, which is surmounted by the two or three spreading stigmas. Some are distinguished by unpleasant odours, and they have little to attract popular attention, although some have been used as potherbs--notably the species figured, and which rejoices in the alternative titles of “Good King Henry” and “All-good.”

Mercury Goosefoot (C. bonus-henricus) is a perennial with a thick fleshy rootstock, and erect channelled stems from one to three feet in height. The leaves are large, dark green, and of the shape that botanists describe as “hastate,” that is, like the head of an ancient halberd. These leaves are somewhat succulent, and in some places are used as a substitute for spinach. The ovary when ripe becomes what is technically known as a utricle, a thin loose case containing a single seed. In this species the seed is black, marked with small punctures. Flowers May to August.

All the other British species are annuals, and among them may be noted the Stinking Goosefoot (C. vulvaria), with spreading stems, small, greasy, mealy leaves, grey-green, and with an odour like rotten fish. Many-seeded Goosefoot (C. polyspermum), with several spreading branches, ovate leaves and many minute, rough, dark-brown seeds. White Goosefoot (C. album), leaves ovate, covered with a white mealy substance, upper portions toothed, sepals keeled, seed dark, shining, very minutely dotted. Red Goosefoot (C. rubrum), with erect, frequently red, stems, smooth and shining, leaves variable in form, and the character of the margin, sometimes toothed, sometimes entire, sepals not keeled. The name is from two Greek words, signifying Goosefoot, in reference to the shape of the leaves in some species.

=Burdock= (Arctium lappa).

The Burdock is a plant well-known to artists and boys; the former being interested in it as a fine foreground plant, the latter on account of its hooked bracts, which make the fruit-head an admirable instrument of torture, or an ornament for decorating some other person’s clothes. In its young state the plant is suggestive of the Butterbur, the fine bold lower leaves having a densely cottony underside as in that plant. But there the similarity ends, for in Butterbur there is no rising stem, whereas in Burdock this ordinarily reaches a stature of three or four feet. We encountered a fine specimen near Chessington, Surrey, in June, 1894, that had reached the height of seven feet three inches, and as it had only just commenced flowering it would probably put on a few additional inches before its growth ceased. The stem is stout, the leaves alternate, heart-shaped, thick. The flowers are in dense heads, like a thistle, but without any spreading rays. The involucre globose, of many leathery bracts ending in long stiff hooks, by means of which the ripe heads become firmly attached to the coats of animals, and the seeds are thus carried far and wide. Corollas, five-lobed, purple. Common in all waste places. Flowering from June to September. According to Hooker this is the only British species, but the “splitters” have made four or more species out of it.

The name is from the Greek, Arktos, a bear, from its rough appearance.

=Goosegrass or Cleavers= (Galium aparine).

Although Goosegrass has nothing else in common with Burdock it resembles it in the fact that its fruit “sticketh closer than a brother.” It is a plant of the hedge, where it forms dense masses, the whole plant--stem, leaves and fruits--being covered with flinty hooks. The rambling botanist, when playfully inclined, detaches a yard-length from the hedge and deftly throwing it against his unconscious companion’s back, causes a hundred hooks to catch in the warp or weft of his coat. It belongs to the Bedstraws, a genus comprising nearly a dozen British species, and distinguished by having minute flowers, yellow, white or greenish, calyx minute, a mere ring, the corolla four or five-lobed, honeyed. Stamens four, styles two, united at their bases. The leaves are borne in whorls of from four to ten, at distant intervals on the square stem. In G. aparine the leaves vary from six to eight, the flower-cymes arise from their axils, the flowers are white, the fruit first green then becoming purplish. Flowers June and July.

Arctium lappa.

--COMPOSITÆ.--

=Goose-grass. Cleavers.=

Galium aparine.

--RUBIACEÆ.--]

Lychnis vespertina.

--CARYOPHYLLEÆ.--]

=White Campion= (Lychnis vespertina).

On page 66 we gave a figure of Lychnis flos-cuculi, and descriptions of that species and L. diurna, the Red Campion. The present species was classed by Linnæus as a mere variety of L. diurna, the two being combined under the name of L. dioica. In general characters the White Campion agrees with the Red, but the calyx is more greenish, and the petals are entirely white (occasionally reddish). The plant is larger and more coarse than its diurnal relative--for, as its name signifies, L. vespertina opens in the evening and is fertilized by night-flying moths. It is a fragrant plant, but its fragrance is reserved for its flowering time--not that its nocturnal visitors require the scent to direct them to the flowers, for they glow and gleam in the dark field and hedgerow from May to September.

=The Holly= (Ilex aquifolium).

The popular knowledge of the Holly has been gained chiefly about Christmas-tide, when its brightly varnished yet repellent leaves and its brilliant berries are much sought for household decoration. To most persons the flower is unknown; yet if they sought the holly in the woods or hedges any time from May to August they would probably find the white flowers produced in “umbellate cymes” from the axils of the leaves. The calyx is slightly downy, with four or five divisions. The petals are four in number, white, conjoined at their bases, or entirely separate. The stamens are four, one attached to the base of each petal; stigmas also four, attached to the ovary, without intervening styles. The fruit, with which we are all so familiar by sight, is technically a drupe, in which category are also placed the cherry and the plum, fruits which have the seed enclosed in a hard “stone” (or endocarp), surrounded by a fleshy pericarp. The holly-berries, as the fruits are called (though they in no wise resemble the gooseberry, which is a true berry), contain four of such stones. This is the only British species.

The name Ilex is said to be of Celtic origin, and derived from ec or ac, a sharp point, but this appears to us very unsatisfactory. Its old English name was holm, a word that has become fixed in some of our place-names for localities where holly is still abundant: such as Holmesdale, Holmwood, and Holmbury, all in Surrey.

If the smooth grey bark of old hollies be scrutinized closely one may find upon it a number of raised black cuneiform marks, not unlike the characters of the Chinese alphabet. They are really the fruits of a lichen, Graphis elegans. With care the piece of bark containing these curious marks may be cut out without defacing or injuring them.

Ilex aquifolium.

--ILICINEÆ.--]

Brassica sinapis.

--CRUCIFERÆ.--]

=Charlock or Wild Mustard= (Brassica sinapis).

An upland cornfield in June with Charlock between the short corn-plants is a beautiful sight for the rambler, but the farmer may be pardoned if he fails to take the æsthetic view; for all that vegetable gold must be laboriously hand-picked, or “cleaned,” as he would probably express it. Charlock is a weed that keeps close to the farmer; that likes the comparatively light and dry soil of the ploughed field.