Part 32

Prunus communis.

--ROSACEÆ.--]

Humulus lupulus.

--URTICACEÆ.--]

=Wild Hop= (Humulus lupulus).

The Wild Hop may not unfrequently be seen in the copse and hedgerow, especially in the South of England. It has a thick branching perennial rootstock--in the cultivated plant called a “set”--from which are produced several long, thin, but tough twining stems that turn with the sun, and tightly clasp the nearest small tree or shrub. It has no tendrils like the vine, but climbs like the convolvulus by simply twining with the sun as it grows. Its lobed and coarsely toothed leaves are very similar to those of the grape-vine, but very rough. The leaves are in pairs, and at the base of the leaf-stalk is a pair of long curved stipules. The Hop is what botanists term a diœcious plant, because staminate flowers only are produced by one individual, and pistillate only by another, making cross-fertilization imperative. It is not the insects, however, that effect this crossing in the Hop, but the wind. The flowers are all small; the staminate produced from the axils of the leaves in long drooping panicles. They have no petals, but there are five sepals and five anthers attached to their bases. Each pistillate flower has a membranous sepal, an ovary, and two long tapering purple stigmas. Two of these pistillate flowers are produced in the axil of a green, broad, concave bract or scale. A number of these twin-flowered bracts are united into a dense spike, and after fertilization this develops into a large cone-like head of yellow scales with resinous glands at their base, which yield a resinous substance called lupuline. The true fruit is a little nut, which is enclosed in the sepal under the bracts. It flowers in July and August. It is the only British species. Beside their extensive use in brewing, the flowers are frequently used to stuff pillows, their narcotic odour inducing sleep.

=The Salad Burnet= (Poterium sanguisorba).

When “cool tankards” were more generally compounded than they are to-day, Salad Burnet was a better-known plant, for, like Borage, it formed one of the ingredients. It was used also in the salad bowl, its leaves having a flavour very similar to that of cucumber. It is a perennial, the rosette of radical leaves springing from a stout rootstock. The leaves are all pinnate; the leaflets in pairs, coarsely toothed, and a terminal leaflet. The stems are slender, branched, and the flowers are gathered into a purplish head. They have no petals, and are of two kinds: the upper ones have a four-lobed calyx with a narrow mouth, from which two styles with brush-like stigmas are exserted; the lower bear both stamens and stigmas, or stamens only. The stamens are four in number, attached to the mouth of the calyx, and the anthers hang out. The plant may be found abundantly in dry pastures, especially in a chalk district, flowering from June till August.

The Rough Burnet (P. muricatum), found in cultivated fields in the Midlands and South of England, is probably only a variety of sanguisorba, owing its large size and roughness to the richer soil it finds in the fields.

The Great Burnet (P. officinale), was formerly regarded as constituting a separate genus, Sanguisorba, but it is very similar to the Salad Burnet. Its flowers, however, are all alike, and contain both stamens and pistils. It is much larger than Salad Burnet, and its flower-heads more cylindric, longer, and of a darker purple hue. The stamens, too, instead of hanging far outside the calyx, are no longer than the lobes of that organ. The flowers produce honey, and are fertilized by insects. The leaflets are fewer and longer in this species. Its habitat is damp meadows, and its flowering time the same as Salad Burnet.

The name Poterium is the Latin term for a drinking-cup, in allusion to its use indicated above.

Poterium sanguisorba.

--ROSACEÆ.--]

Hedera helix.

--ARALIACEÆ.--]

=Ivy= (Hedera helix).

How common is Ivy, whether wild or cultivated! Yet how few are acquainted with its flowers!

There is no occasion to say that the Ivy is an evergreen perennial climbing shrub, nor to describe the form of the beautiful leathery leaf. If there is one leaf that may be said to be thoroughly well known to every British man, woman, and child, it must be the Ivy, for it thrives in dark corners of towns as well as on the hedge-banks of the country, and its foliage has been so well used in all classes of ornamental work. And yet there are few leaves that are subject to such great variation of form, though, with all its changes, one dominant character runs through them all, except its upper leaves, which are totally unlike. The Holly has prickly leaves for its lower branches, but those that are above the heads of browsing cattle have “entire” margins. So with the Ivy; its five-lobed leaves are for its trailing and climbing branches, but when it has reached the top of the wall or the tree it puts on simple lance-shaped leaves, and in September or October crowns these shoots with its umbels of yellow-green flowers.

The flower consists of a calyx with five triangular teeth, petals and stamens five each, style one, with five obscure stigmas. The flowers are succeeded by blackish berries, sometimes yellow. There is a common woodland variety, with smaller, narrower leaves, that never flowers; neither do those forms that persistently trail along the hedge bottom instead of climbing. Ivy has been at various times condemned as causing dampness in the walls it covers; the exact converse is the truth. It is the only British species; the genus contains but two for the whole world.

=Arrowhead= (Sagittaria sagittifolia).

One of the most striking among the many forms of leaves that go to make up the vegetation of the sluggish stream or the canal is the aptly-named plant here figured.

It is a perennial, the leaves are radical, and from the base of the plant runners are thrown out, each ultimately terminating in a globose tuber. The leaves are typical of what botanists describe as a “sagittate” leaf, and their long stalks are three-edged. The stem is leafless, but bears a number of flowers in series of threes. These flowers are of two kinds, staminate and pistillate, and because, like those of Poterium, they are borne upon the same plant, botanists describe Sagittaria as monœcious, just as they describe the Hop as diœcious, because its two sexes are on different plants. There are three sepals, and three large white petals with purplish spots at their base. The lower flowers contain carpels only, which are many in number, and which develop into a compact head of nut-like fruits. The stalks of these pistillate flowers are shorter than those of the staminate flowers above them, which contain purple anthers. It flowers from July to September, and is frequent in England as far north as Cumberland, as an indigenous plant; in Scotland it has become naturalized, and in Ireland it is of local occurrence. It is the only British species.

The name is from the Latin sagitta, an arrow.

Sagittaria sagittifolia.

--ALISMACEÆ.--]

Sonchus arvensis.

--COMPOSITÆ.--]

=The Corn Sow-thistle= (Sonchus arvensis).