Part 31

Nuphar luteum.

--NYMPHEACEÆ.--]

=Yellow Water-lily= (Nuphar luteum).

In some districts, where the Yellow Water-lily floats on the bosom of ponds and sluggish streams, it is known as the Brandy-bottle, partly by reason of its unpleasant odour and partly on account of its flagon-like seed-vessel.

It has a thick fleshy rootstock, which creeps in the mud, and is rich in tannic acid; it is said to be a fatal lure to cockroaches if bruised and soaked in milk. Some of the leaves are submerged, and these are thin, but the floating ones are thick and leathery. The leaves are heart-shaped, the lobes not far apart; the stalks somewhat triangular in section, and traversed by a great number of fine air-canals, as are the flower-stalks also. The most conspicuous portion of the flower is the sepals, five or six in number, which are very large and concave. The petals are much smaller, and number about twenty; they produce honey at their base. The stamens are even more numerous than the petals, in several rows, their blunt tips bent over away from the many-celled ovary. The stigma is rayed. The fruit ripens above water, and is, as we have indicated, flagon-shaped; the seeds are imbedded in pulp. Flowers from June till August.

There is another species:--

The Lesser Yellow Water-lily (N. pumilum), which occurs in Shropshire and in Scotland, from Elgin to Argyll, but it is rare. Its oblong leaves are divided at the base, the lobes becoming distant from each other. The petals are rounder than in luteum, the anthers shorter, and the rays of the stigma reach to the margin, which is lobed.

The name is from the Arabic for this or a similar plant, naufar.

The White Water-lily (Nymphæa alba), though constituting the British representative of a distinct genus, is closely allied, as, indeed, is the magnificent Victoria regia of South American rivers, with leaves 10 or 12 feet across, and flowers 15 inches and more in diameter.

=Wild Teasel= (Dipsacus sylvestris).

We have explained (page 98) in what respect the Scabious differs from the somewhat similar flowers of Compositæ, and to a considerable extent that explanation will hold good for the genus Dipsacus, which is united to Scabiosa in the Natural Order Dipsaceæ. There is this difference, however: in Dipsacus the flower-bracts end in long, straight, sharp points, and the involucel is four-angled. There are two British species:--

I. Wild Teasel (D. sylvestris). A striking object in copse or hedgerow; its stout, angular and spiny stems rising to a height of 4 or 5 feet, and crowned by the prickly-cylindrical heads of flowers. These heads have an involucre, consisting of from eight to twelve slender rigid bracts, spiny, longer than the flower-head, curved upward and ending in a fine point. The corolla is purple, tubular, with four short unequal lobes. It is a biennial plant, and only has radical leaves during its first year, sending up the flowering stem the second season. These are stalked, lance-shaped, with a stout mid-rib, which is armed with short curved spines. The stem-leaves are opposite, not stalked, the lower couples joined together by their bases, thus forming a large cup, in which rain collects and drowns many insects that attempt to ascend the tall stem. Flowers August and September. The Fuller’s Teasel (D. fullonum), of so great importance to the cloth manufacturer, is believed to be a cultivated variety of sylvestris, having the involucral bracts shorter and spreading, and the scales of the flower-heads hooked.

II. Small Teasel (D. pilosus). This is a more slender plant, the stem not so tall or stout, and the prickles ending in soft hair-points. Leaves stalked, hairy. Flower-heads at first drooping, then erect; smaller, rounder, hairy, the involucral bracts shorter than the head. Flowers white. August and September, in moist hedges; not so generally distributed as sylvestris.

Dipsacus Sylvestris.

--DIPSACEÆ.--]

Tanacetum vulgare.

--COMPOSITÆ.--]

=Common Tansy= (Tanacetum vulgare).

Time was when every cottage garden and every kitchen garden had its clump of Tansy, for it was a valued item in the housewife’s pharmacopœia, and was all but invaluable in cookery. A belief is entertained by some botanists that the Tansy-plants growing wild in waste places by field and roadside throughout the country are garden escapes, or their descendants, that have become naturalized.

The Tansy is a perennial, with creeping rootstock, from which arise beautiful broad feathery radical leaves and flowering stems. The leaves are very deeply divided in a pinnate or bi-pinnate manner, the segments toothed. The angled stem reaches a height of about two feet, and then branches off into a corymb of flower-heads. Each flower-head is enclosed in a half-rounded involucre of leathery bracts. There is an outer row of ray-florets, but they are very short, and of the same dull yellow colour as the disk-florets; they are pistillate only, whilst the disk-florets are all staminate. Flowers during August and September.

All parts of the plant give off a strong aromatic scent when touched or handled, and the taste is exceedingly bitter, a quality which caused it to be used as a stomachic tonic and a vermifuge.

This is the only British species of the genus, whose name is said to be a corruption of Athanasia deathless; but probably it is not so derived.

=Blackthorn, or Sloe= (Prunus communis).

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.