Part 33

We were nearly remarking that the Sow-thistle is one of the most beautiful of our native flowers, but remembering that we have already applied that observation to several species, we will alter the formula and say it is among the most handsome. Certainly no one who sees it growing is likely to pass it by without plucking some of the flowers, though they will be disappointed in these flagging and losing their beauty before home is reached. We have three native species, of which this is undoubtedly the finest, the stem growing to a height of three or four (or, as we have found it in Surrey, over five) feet. It is a perennial, with a large creeping rootstock, which sends off runners. The stem is hollow, milky, and clasped by the bases of the finely cut leaves. These are deeply lobed, and edged with sharp teeth; the lower leaves have stalks, the upper have not. The unopened involucre--for this again is a Composite--will strike the finder as being singularly square; it is covered all over--as are the stems also-with short hairs with glandular tops of a golden yellow. The expanded flower-head is about two inches across, and is composed entirely of ray-florets. The plant will be found flowering in or around cultivated fields in August and September. The other British species are:--

I. Marsh Sow-thistle (S. palustris), now all but extinct, and found only rarely in the Eastern counties of England and Kent. It is taller-growing than arvensis, the stem sometimes reaching nine feet, but the flowers are only half the size of that species.

II. Common Sow-thistle (S. oleraceus). A common annual in every field and waste. General character of plant very similar to arvensis, but smaller. Stem, two to three feet in height, without (or rarely with) the glandular hairs. Flower-heads many, not exceeding an inch in diameter. June to September.

Name supposed to be derived from the Greek, sonthos, hollow, in reference to the fistular stems.

=Grass of Parnassus= (Parnassia palustris).

It is a singular thing that some of our most beautiful plants grow in the most unpleasant places. We remember a backwater of the River Thames that used to receive the waste waters from a large soap-works, and in the evening, when this waste was poured out, the stench arising from the ditch was unbearable. Yet, with its feet in this vile liquid, the Meadow-sweet grew luxuriantly, but truth compels us to add that its sweetness was thrown away; it could not overcome the other smell. Black bogs and mossy swamps are the particular haunts of floral beauties, such as the marsh violet, the bog buckbean, the marsh marigold, the bog pimpernel, the sundew, the bog asphodel; and it is in such resorts we must look for the Grass of Parnassus, a plant so pretty and elegant of form that it must first have grown upon Mount Parnassus. At any rate, the English name is a mere translation of that given to it by Dioscorides, among the six or seven hundred plants mentioned by him.

It is a perennial, with a stout rootstock. With few exceptions the leaves are radical; they are heart-shaped, smooth, with untoothed edges, and on long stalks. The flowering stems are long, angular, with a stalkless leaf nearly half-way up. At the summit is the solitary large flower. The fine thick sepals are slightly conjoined at their bases, the petals white, veined and leathery. The ovary is large, and on its summit, without the intervention of a style, are the four rayed stigmas. Around the ovary are five stamens--there should be ten, but five have been transformed into scales, which alternate with the perfect stamens, and are fringed with white hairs, each ending in a yellow knob; on the face nearest the ovary each scale bears two small honey-secreting glands. The perfect stamens ripen in succession, and as each becomes mature, it raises itself until the anther comes on top of the stigma, but with its back to it. The front opens and discharges the pollen away from the stigma; but it falls where insects seeking the honeyed glands (using the ovary as a perch) will get it upon their forelegs, and so attach it to the stigmas of the next flower they visit.

Parnassia palustris.

--SAXIFRAGÆ.--]

Avena sativa.

--GRAMINEÆ.--]

It flowers in August and September. This is the only British species.

=Oat-grass= (Avena sativa).

We have three British species of Wild Oat, but a knowledge of their structure and differences may be best obtained perhaps by a consideration of the cultivated Oat of our fields. It is indeed probable that the cereal oat is but a cultivated form of our Common Wild Oat (A. fatua), for Professor Buckman succeeded years ago in obtaining as the ninth generation from seeds of A. fatua good crops of the farmers’ varieties called White Tartarian and Potato Oats. It is known that oats shed in harvesting often degenerate into the wild forms. As a cereal the Oat does not appear to be nearly so ancient as wheat and barley, for it was not cultivated by the Hebrews, the Egyptians, Greeks or Romans.

The genus is distinguished by having its flowers in a lax-panicle, the spikelets borne principally upon long, slender stalks. Each spikelet contains two or more flowers, of which the upper one is usually imperfect, and each is armed with a long twisted and bent awn. There are two outer glumes, each flowering glume deeply notched, the awn arising from the bottom of the notch. The pale is two-nerved, the scales two-toothed, the stamens three. The ovary has a hairy top and two short styles with feathery stigmas. The fruit adheres to the glume.

I. Wild Oat (Avena fatua). An annual with two- or three-flowered spikelets which droop at length. The empty glumes with nine nerves, flowering glumes covered with stiff hairs. Brown awn much bent, the lower half twisted. Leaves flat and roughish; sheaths smooth. Cornfields. June to August.

II. Narrow-leaved Oat (A. pratensis). Perennial; not to be sought in the place indicated by pratensis, as it is a plant of the moor and dry pasture. Spikelets half erect, six flowered. Leaves flat, or edges rolled inwards, smooth, hard and rigid. Lower sheaths rough. Flowering glume, rough. Awn only slightly bent. June and July.

III. Downy Oat (A. pubescens). Perennial. Spikelets half erect, two-flowered. Leaves flatter than A. pratensis, downy; sheaths very downy. Awns wider apart. Dry pastures. June and July.

The name is the old Latin term for oats and reeds.

=Mountain Ash or Rowan= (Pyrus aucuparia).

We have considered many members of the beautiful Rose family already, but we have now a representative of another branch of it--the Wild-Apple section. The fruit of the Mountain Ash is really a little apple. It has no relationship with the Ash (Fraxinus, see page 135), but the mere resemblance of its pinnate leaves has won the name. It is a low tree, growing from twenty to forty feet in height. It flowers in May, the creamy white blossoms being grouped in a cyme. The leaf is divided pinnately into six, seven, or eight pairs of leaflets and a terminal odd one; each leaflet toothed, the mid-rib and nerves hairy. The calyx also is hairy. The flowers are succeeded by a cluster of bright scarlet tiny apples, with yellow flesh and a three-celled hard “core” or endocarp. These are ripe in September, and are eagerly sought after by birds--a fact of which advantage has been taken by bird-catchers of all times and places where the tree grows. It is used for the purpose of baiting their horse-hair springes, whence it has got the name of Fowler’s Service-tree, and in the principal European countries it bears a name of like import. Its folk-names in this country alone make a long list:--Quicken-tree, Quick-Beam, Wiggen, Whichen, or Witcher, Wild Ash, Wild Service, Rowan, Roan, or Roddan, Mountain Service, and other variations. Some of these names are reminders of its supposed protective powers against the machinations of witches and warlocks. “Witches have no power where there is Rowan-tree wood.”

Pyrus is the old Latin name for a pear-tree.

Pyrus aucuparia.

--ROSACEÆ.--]

Polygonum fagopyrum.

--POLYGONEÆ.--]

=Buckwheat= (Polygonum fagopyrum).

In the neighbourhood of manure-heaps and on the borders of cultivated ground one may come across this plant, which was formerly included in the British Flora, but is now known to be a mere waif of cultivation. Its home is in Central Asia, but it has been so long cultivated as a food-plant in Europe and in the United States that it has become naturalized in most places. In this country it is chiefly grown as a food for pheasants. It is an annual, with a tall, slender, branched, reddish stem, and heart-shaped, almost arrow-headed leaves with entire margins. Flowers in panicles. The individual blossoms consist of five pale reddish sepals, no petals, eight stamens, and three styles. The flowers are of two forms, one with long stamens and short styles; the other with short stamens and long styles. The fruit is large, three-sided, solitary in a nut, very like beech-mast, whence its folk-name buch- or buck-wheat. It will be noted that at the base of the leaf-stalk is a pair of thin stipules, which sheathe the stem and mark the swollen nodes that give the knotted appearance so characteristic of the genus, and which has given it the name of many knees or joints (Greek polus and gonu). Buckwheat flowers during July and August. It is a valuable honey-plant, esteemed of bee-masters. There are a dozen British species; among them:--