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THE WOBURN LIBRARY

OF

NATURAL HISTORY
EDITED BY

HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF BEDFORD, K.G.

WILD FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

ILD FRUITS OF THE
COUNTRY-SIDE

FIGURED AND DESCRIBED
F. EDWARD HULME, F.L.S., F.S.A.

AUTHOR OF

‘““WAYSIDE SKETCHES,” ‘* FAMILIAR WILD FLOWERS”
““SUGGESTIONS IN FLORAL DESIGN,” “ MYTHLAND”
““NATURAL HISTORY LORE AND LEGEND,” ETC., ETC.

WITH THIRTY-SIX COLOURED
PLATES BY THE AUTHOR

London: HUTCHINSON & CO
Paternoster Row mm ~@& 1902

PRINTED BY
HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD.
LONDON AND AYLESBURY

es ok

VU

WoBURN ABBEY,

21st July, 1902,

Ir is not every one who has the taste, capacity, or
leisure for the scientific study of Natural History. But
there are few persons who do not feel that some know-
ledge of the processes and products of Nature increases
the enjoyment of country life. To supply this knowledge,
in a form at once easily assimilated and_ scientifically
accurate, is the object of the Wosurn SERIES OF
Natura History.

Each subject will be treated by a writer who has
made it his special study. In this volume, therefore,
as in all the succeeding volumes, the writer speaks for
himself, and the Editor has not attempted to impose
his own opinions on those who have been asked to

contribute to the series.

[Seder

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
PAGE

The Ideas associated with Autumn—Often Pessimistic, but needlessly
so—Autumn the Period of Fruition—The Infinite Variety of Nature
—Why Fruits thought of less Interest than Flowers—The Hedge-
rows— Hawthorn or Whitethorn—Worlidge’s AZystery of Husbandry
—The May—The Poets thereon—Tree-worship—Haws—the Cross
of Thorns—Adam in Eden—The Doctrine of Signatures—The
Traveller's Joy—The Privet— Buckthorn—Gerard’s Generall
Historie of Plantes—The Wild Roses of our Hedges—Hips—The
Sweet Briar—Eglantine of the Poets—Bedeguar—The Field Rose
—Drying Plants—Hazel—Powers of Divination—The Squirrel’s
Hoard—Nut-shells and their Occupants—Keats on the Autumn—
Prognostications from Nuts—Why we eat Almonds and Raisins—
Culpeper in Defence of Nuts—The Guelder-rose—Snowball-tree
—Woody Nightshade—Its Poisonous Berries—Dry-beaten Folk—
Black Nightshade, or Petty Morel—Hop—The Vine of the North—
The Herbalist Lobel—Willow-wolves—The Ivy—lIts Great Variation
in Form—Gerard thereupon—Is Ivy harmful to Trees ?—Shake-
speare on Parasites—The Poet’s Crown—Christmas Decorations—
Black Bryony—Red-berried Bryony—Bacon on Climbing Plants
—The Blackthorn—Blackthorn Winter—Sloe Tea—Spindle-tree—
Wayfaring Tree—The foure Bookes. of Husbandry—Parkinson’s
Theatrum Botanicum—The Yew —The Saturnalia — Clipping
Dragons and Peacocks—The English Archers—Churchyard Yews
—Dogwood—Honeysuckle—The Blackberry—Dewberries—Cloud-
berries—Stone-bramble—Raspberry—Strawberry—Medieval Pre-
scriptions—Barberry—Bird-cherries—The Cuckoo-pint or Wild
Arum : . : : : ; - - : és : - I

CHAPTER II

The Trees of the Forest—The Monarch Oak—Acorns as Food—Oak-
mast for the Pigs—Panage in Domesday Book—Oak Galls of
Various Kinds—The Beech—St. Leonard’s Forest Experiences—
Name-carving—Beech-mast—The Hornbeam—The Scotch Fir, or

vl

CONTENTS vil

° PAGE
Pine—Its Mountain Home—Cones, Pine-apples—The Larch—

Planted by the Million—Spanish Chestnut—As an Article of Food
—Abnormal Cluster—The Horse-Chestnut—A Central Asian Tree
—The Birch—The Lady of the Woods—Greenland’s one Tree—
—Its Silvery Bark—The Books of Numa—Witches’ Knots—
Attraction of Sap to Butterflies—The Birchen-rod—The “ Village
Schoolmistress ”"—The Ash—The ‘Venus of the Woods’”—The
Husbandman’s Tree—Elizabethan Statute for the Preservation of
Timber—Ash-keys—Peter-keys—Norden on Sussex Iron-furnaces
—Shrew-ash—The Serpent’s Antipathy—The Rowan, or Mountain
Ash—Difference of Opinion on Floral Odours—The Witchen-tree—
Preservative from the Evil Eye—The Service-tree—Service-berries
as Food—The Sycamore—The Biblical Sycamore—The Great
Maple—The False Plane—Sycamore-wine—Fungoid Growth on
the Leaves—Winged Fruits—Distribution of Seeds of the Sycamore
—The Maple—Maser-tree—The Plane—Its Peeling Bark—A
Town-tree—Irrigation with Wine—The Holly—The Saturnalia
again—Tunbridge Ware—The Flail—The of Tibur—‘ As ae
saith”—Bird-lime . ; ‘ : ; : ; 99

CHAPTER III

Plants of the Moorland, the Meadow, the Stream—Difficulty of Classi-
fication—The Yellow Iris—Obedience in Nature to Law—The
Relief of Choler—The Touch-me-not—A North American Plant—
The Alder—Amsterdam and Venice built thereon—The Gladdon,
or Feetid Iris—The Elder—Its Value in Medicine—The Laciniated
Variety—Bagpipes—The Bilberry—The Bleaberry—The Cowberry,
or Red Whortleberry—The Strawberry Tree—A Fruyt of small
Honor”—The Butcher's Broom—Thorn Apple—A Remedy for
Asthma—The Henbane—Skeletonising Leaves—A Plant of Saturn
—Influence of Stars on Human Life—The Writings of Matthiolus
—The Dwale, or Deadly Nightshade—Its Virulent Properties—
Airopine—The Juniper—The Biblical Tree so-called—Its Employ-
ment in Distillation—The Antidote of Mithridates—Mistletoe—
Druidic Rites—Forbidden in Churches—Parasitic—-On what Trees
found—The Compleat Husbandman—Piiny on Druidism—Mistletoe
growing in Westminster—How to grow Mistletoe—Sir John
Colbatch on its Medicinal Value—The Cross-leaved Mistletoe—
Paley on Evidences of Design—The Columbine—What is an
Indigenous Plant?—A Symbol of Grief—The Scarlet Poppy—
Buttercups—The Parsnip—The Sylva Sylvarum of Bacon—Carrot,
or Bird’s-nest—Cranberries—The Bearberry—The Crowberry—
Broom—Shepherd’s Needle—Conclusion : : : : 5 GE:

1

TUE

IV.
V.

VI.

VII.
VITi.

IX.

X.

XI.

XII.

XIII.
XIV.

XV.

XVI.
XVII.
XVIII.
XIX.
XX.

XXI.
XXII.
XXIII.
XXIV.
XXV.
XXVI.
XXVII.
XXVIII.
XXIX,
XXX.
XXXI.
XXXII.
XXXIII.
XXXIV.
XXXV.
XXXVI.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING PAGE

HAWTHORN— Crategus oxyacantha
Privet—Ligustrum vulgare .

SwEET Briar—fosa rubiginosa

FieLp RosE—Aosa arvensis
HazELt—Corylus Avellana :
Woopy NIGHTSHADE—So/anum Dascumars
Horp—Humulus Lupulus

Brack Bryony—TZamus communis
BLACKTHORN—Pvunus spinosa c
SPINDLE-TREE—Luonymus Europaus . 5 -
YeEw, Taxus baccata, AND DoGwoop—Cornus sanguinea
BLACKBERRY—Lubus fruticosus
STRAWBERRY—Fragaria vesca
Cuckoo-PiInt—Arum maculatum .

Oaxk— Quercus robur

BEeecu—/agus sylvatica

ScotcH Pine—Linus sylvestris

SPANISH CHESTNUT—Castanea vesca :
Horse Cuestnut—“sculus hippocastanum .
Birco—Betula alba

Rowan—Pyrus aucuparia

SycAMORE—Acer pseudo-platanus
PLANE—/ZVatanus orientalis

Hotty—/ex aquifolium

YELLOW Ir1s—J/ris pseudacorus
ALDER—A/nus glutinosa

Giavpon—/ris fetidissima .
ELDER—Samobucus nigra

STRAWBERRY TREE—Ardbutus Lae

THoRN APPLE—Datura Stramonium .
DwaLe—A¢rvopa Belladonna

MIsTLETOE— Viscum album .
CoLUMBINE—<Aguilegia vulgaris .
Parsnip—Ffastinaca sativa .
Broom—Sarothamnus scoparius

SHEPHERD’S NEEDLE—Scandix Pecten.

viii

THE

FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

CHAPTER I

The Ideas associated with Autumn—Often Pessimistic, but needlessly so—
Autumn the Period of Fruition—The Infinite Variety of Nature—Why
Fruits thought of less Interest than Flowers—The Hedgerows—Hawthorn
or Whitethorn—Worlidge’s Mystery of Husbandry—The May—The
Poets thereon—Tree-worship—Haws—The Cross of Thorns—Adam in
£den—The Doctrine of Signatures—The Traveller’s Joy—The Privet—
Buckthorn—Gerard’s Generall Historie of Plantes—The Wild Roses
of our Hedges—Hips—The Sweet Briar—Eglantine of the Poets—
Bedeguar—The Field Rose—Drying Plants—Hazel—Powers of Divina-
tion—The Squirrel’s Hoard—Nut-shells and their Occupants—Keats on
the Autumn—Prognostications from Nuts—Why we eat Almonds and
Raisins—Culpeper in Defence of Nuts—The Guelder-rose—Snowball-
tree—Woody Nightshade, Its poisonous Berries—Dry-beaten Folk—
Black Nightshade, or Petty Morel—Hop—The Vine of the North—The
Herbalist Lobel—Willow-wolves—The Ivy—Its great Variation in
Form—Gerard thereupon—Is Ivy harmful to Trees ?—Shakespeare on
Parasites—The Poet’s Crown—Christmas Decorations—Black Bryony—
Red-berried Bryony—Bacon on Climbing Plants—The Blackthorn—
Blackthorn Winter—Sloe Tea—Spindle-tree—Wayfaring Tree—The
Foure Bookes of Husbandry—Parkinson’s Theatrum Botanicum—The
Yew—The Saturnalia—Clipping Dragons and Peacocks—The English
Archers—Churchyard Yews—Dogwood—Honeysuckle—The Blackberry
—Dewberries—Cloud-berries—Stone-bramble—Rasp berry— Strawberry
—Medizeval Prescriptions —Barberry—Bird-cherries—The Cuckoo-pint
or Wild Arum.

HE ideas associated with Autumn, we are afraid,
are often not altogether happy ones. If we are at

all inclined to be pessimistic the thought suggests itself
I

2 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

that the gloriously long and sunny days of Summer are at
last over; that the inevitable period of decay has come ;
that nothing now remains to us but to pass through a
certain season of dank discomfort until we emerge to find
ourselves in the icy grasp of Winter !

That there is another and a brighter side goes without
saying. Autumn is no less the season of glorious fruition,
when bud and blossom have at last fulfilled their mission
and changed to ripened fruit, when the long labours of
the farmer have culminated in the harvest-field, and all
alike—harvest-mouse and squirrel, blackbird, ploughboy,
and millionaire—share the common bounty, and find yet
again the great promise tulfilled that till the end of time
the days of harvest shall never fail.

The busy townman, surrounded in his home by
multitudinous chimney-pots and encircled by gas-lamps
innumerable, thinks with kindly pity on his brother in
the country who has but the lights of heaven to guide his
steps, to whom pavements are a luxury unknown, and
who, in lieu of the gong of the electric-car, has to be
content with music so old-fashioned as that poured forth
by the lark as he circles upward, ever upward, into the
great azure vault. Living, as we ourselves did, for many
years in a district purely rural, we found that the fixed
impression amongst our urban friends was that we were to
be greatly envied for three months in the year, to be no
less greatly pitied for the remaining nine ; and they entirely
failed to credit or realise that for twelve months in each
year the country life is full of charm, the only stipulation
necessary to attain that result being that one should be in
sympathy with one’s environment.

INTRODUCTORY 3

One great attraction of the rural life is the constant
change that is going on around us; there is really no time
to be dull, no call for self-pity. In Nature’s great picture
gallery there is infinite variety of subject. In the clear,
frosty days of mid-winter the sun, shining on the rime-
covered trees and herbage, turns the whole countryside
into glittering fairyland, and in the sweet Springtide, when
all Nature is instinct with life, the copses teem with
primroses and wind-flowers, and the woodlands are carpeted
in purple with innumerable hyacinths. To these succeed
the glorious Summer days, when the air is full of the
melody of birds, and when everything is instinct with the
joy of life; and these halcyon days pass insensibly into
the no less glorious days of Autumn, when the valleys
laugh and sing with golden harvest, and the woods are
aflame with the foliage of the beech, the birch, or the
maple, or clothed in crimson, or russet, or purple, with a
splendour that makes one’s colour-box a broken reed
indeed, when one would endeavour to depict something of
this beauty and richness of tint. It is to these latter days
we turn for inspiration for our pages, for subjects of our
illustrations.

It has been suggested that while many persons will
find a wealth of interest in the flowers they see around
them in their country rambles, the hedgerow fruits can
scarcely be expected to awaken a like regard; but such
a suggestion appears to be but a mere begging of the
question, a starting-point that we cannot accept. Nor
does one at all care to argue out the more or less of
interest, for to the real lover of Nature the appreciation of
her works is all-embracing, excluding all idea of deprecia-

4 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

tion, exalting nothing at the expense of anything else, seeing
beauty and interest everywhere.

In the case of those who have not reached this
catholicity of sympathy, who cannot but admit a marked
preference for glorious Summer over glowing Autumn,
several reasons have no doubt influenced them in their
difference of appreciation. One point that occurs to one’s
mind is that while the fruits are often to be found in the
hedgerows, they are possibly out of reach, or probably
only attainable by some little risk of damage from thorns,
prickles, and projecting branches, and are at all events not
so easily gathered as the roadside flower. They do not,
therefore, get picked and taken home to be a pleasure
for days as the flowers do, and it is a commonplace in
proverbial philosophy that the absent meet with scant
regard. Another reason no doubt is that an atmosphere
of poetry and sentiment has gathered round flowers as a
whole, and on some in an especial degree ; while fruits
have not only not been thus idealised, but have in not a
few cases been branded as poisonous things to be severely
let alone. Early training has, beyond all doubt, much to
answer for here ; youngsters will put everything into their
mouths, and some berries are undoubtedly harmful. What
course, then, so simple on the part of the ignorant nurse
as to save herself from all responsibility by including all
wild berries in one sweeping denunciation? Yet another
reason for this difference of appreciation, where it exists,
is that while many popular books have dealt more or less
adequately with our Flora, and freely illustrated it, books
giving any great attention to the wild fruits of our land
are conspicuously absent, and so attention is not called

INTRODUCTORY 5

to them. That this is a potent influence we had clear
demonstration, for on asking what we considered to be
a fairly representative person why flowers were more
attractive than fruits, the reply was at once forthcoming,
“ Because flowers are so varied in form and colour, while
fruits are all alike.” We trust that one of the results
of our present pleasant labours will be to demonstrate that
this is a libel and a fallacy, that a privet-berry and an acorn
are distinguishable the one from the other, that a beech-nut
and a blackberry are not so identical in form and colour
but that practice and observation will enable us to tell
which is which.

Our purpose is a very simple one, to deal with the
principal typical forms that one may reasonably expect to
meet with during a country sojourn, and to deal with them
in the simplest way—caring but little to send our readers
to the dictionary in a wild quest for six-syllabled words
of weird appearance, but caring much if the result of the
perusal of our pages be to so far interest them as to send
them to seek for themselves in the great Book of Nature.

We shall describe not merely the fruit alone, but give
such details of the plant that bears it as may, we trust,
increase our interest in it; and our subject will be found
to fall very naturally into three sections: that dealing with
the plants of our hedgerows ; that occupied with the trees
of our woodlands ; and a third division, yet more compre-
hensive, that will concern itself with the Flora of the stream,
the breezy moorland, the meadow, and generally any locality
of botanical interest outside the locale of chapters one
and two.

6 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

HAWTHORN (Crata@cus OxvaAcaNnTHA).

Skirting, then, our hedgerow we soon encounter the
hawthorn, the subject of our first illustration, a shrub of
abundant occurrence, well known, therefore, doubtless to
most of our readers, but scarcely to be omitted from our
series on that ground.

While the hawthorn is undoubtedly indigenous and
may be found taking its place amongst the other trees
in our forests, we are most of us, perhaps, more especially
familiar with it as a valuable material for making hedges,
and that this use of it is of very considerable antiquity
may be gathered from the fact that the Anglo-Saxon name
for the plant is “‘ haeg-thorn,” the hedge-thorn. That it
may claim a place, however, amongst British forest trees
must not be overlooked, as specimens are on record, having
trunks with a circumference of ten feet, and a height of
some fifty feet. The timber is of firm texture and capable
of taking a fine polish.

These old thorns, and some of them are known to have
been in existence over two centuries, ;are ordinarily very
picturesque in appearance, as their stems are extraordinarily
contorted and interwoven, and we may often, on bleak
hillsides, find specimens of perhaps not more than ten or
twelve feet high, yet looking as venerable as forest trees
centuries old, with their stems closely wreathed together
and thickly covered with grey lichen.

Returning to our hedgerow, however, we find that this
same freedom of interweaving of the branches makes the
hawthorn of great value as a hedge-maker.' We have but

1 Seeing that Fencing and Enclosing of Land is most evident to be
a piece of the highest Improvement of Lands, and that all our Plantations

HAWTHORN 7

to contrast it for a moment with the elder, a plant we
sometimes find introduced in the hedgerow, to realise
this. Whatever our mission, blackberrying, birdsnesting,
or what not, if we can only find a place where the hawthorn
gives place to an elder-bush we shall find the hedge much
more vulnerable than where the mass of closely gathered,
thorn-clothed branches of hawthorn bar our passage.

The hawthorn is known as the whitethorn also, in
contradistinction to the blackthorn, the subject of our
ninth illustration. This name is not confined to ourselves,
as in France the hawthorn is the epine blanche, in Spain
it is the Espino blanco, while in Italy it is known as the
bianco spino. The name arises from the comparative
lightness of colour of the stem of the hawthorn as con-
trasted with that of the blackthorn, but the names are not
particularly happy in either case, one of these stems being
by no means black, while the other has absolutely no claim
to be considered white.

In the early Summer the tree is a mass of fragrant
blossom,! and so another of its popular names is the May.

of Woods, Fruits, and other Tillage are thereby secured from external
Injuries, which would otherwise lie open to the Cattle, and also subject to
the lusts of vile persons, we are obliged to maintain a good Fence, if we
expect an answerable success to our Labours. I shall therefore enquire
out the most proper Trees for that purpose: And first, the Whitethorn
is esteemed the best for fencing; it is raised either of Seeds or Plants ;
by Plants is the speediest way, but by Seeds, where the place will admit
of delay, is less charge, and as successful, though it require longer time, they
being till the Spring come twelvemonth ere they spring out of the Earth;
but when they have past two or three years, they flourish to admiration,—
Worlidge. The Mystery of Husbandry Discovered, 1675.
1 There sawe I eke the fresh hauthorne

In white motley, that so swete doth smell,

Asshe, firre, and oke, with many a yong acorne,

And many a tree mo then I can tell.

—The Complaint of the Blacke Knight——CHAvucer.

8 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

It wasin the olden time employed to garland the maypole,
and to take a generally honoured and conspicuous place in
the festivities of May-day. The bursting of the leaf-buds,
transfiguring the plant in a few short days from its Winter
condition of leafless stem to a mass of verdure, and thence
onward to its vesture of snow-white blossoms, is one of
the most characteristic indications that the long-looked-for
Spring has at last really come. Thus Spenser, in drawing
up his Shepherd’s Calendar, writes :

Seest thou not thilke same’ hawthorne studde

How braggly it begins to budde

And utter his tender head ?
While Thomson, in his Spring, dwells upon the whitening
hawthorn. In like manner Shakespeare indicates that
delightful time

When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear,

and, with no less truth of observation, tells, in King Lear,
how

Through the sharp hawthorn blows the cold wind,

for, in the bleak days of Winter, the icy breezes whistle
keenly enough amid its leafless branches, and though
Goldsmith pictures to us

The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade

For talking age and whispering lovers made,
it yields, when it has lost its mantling of foliage, poor
screen indeed against the wintry blast, the driving snow.

The clustering May blossoms give place later on to the

crimson berries that we figure in our illustration, and
these are oftentimes so numerous that the general effect of
the tree at a little distance is that of a crimson spot in

HAWTHORN 9

the landscape. These berries are known as haws, a name
that has descended to us from Saxon times. These haws
are very popular with many kinds of birds, and supply
them with very welcome and abundant food, and as the
Winter draws on they become in great request. Bacon,
in his quaint Natural History, declares it “an observation
amongst country people that years of store of hawes and
hips do commonly portend cold winters ; and they ascribe
it to God’s Providence, that, as the Scripture saith,
reacheth even to the falling of a sparrow, and much more
is it like to reach to the preservation of birds in such a
season.”

To the ordinary man or woman—we exclude the ordinary
boy, as he is practically omnivorous—these haws do not
appeal very strongly. One does not hanker after them,
or count the months round to their return, but they are
eatable, and are occasionally eaten in time of dearth, and
in some parts of the world they are even fermented into
a kind of wine. In an old book open before us we see
that they are declared to be “good food for Hogges, and
therefore the Swineherds do beat them down for them.”
One can only wonder, as in the case of those multi-
tudinous ants that the great ant-eater draws up on his
tongue, or the animalcule that the whale, some millions
their size, makes a meal on, how many of these little
berries are necessary to produce that feeling of satiety
that the Hogge would consider as approaching his ideal.

Our forefathers believed that he who wore a piece of
hawthorn in his hat was safe from all peril of lightning,
could face unscathed all heaven’s artillery ; and another
article of faith was that its spiny stem was entwined into

10 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

the thorny cross of Calvary.'. This association with the
person of our Lord was held to give it many virtues,
preserving the wearer thereof, not merely from the perils
of the storm, but from all the wiles and malevolence of
ghostly visitants. In many parts of rural England it is
yet held an ill-omened thing to chop a hawthorn down,
and, with strange inconsequence, it is held unlucky to bring
its blossoms into the house, unless, perchance, the evil of
gathering it was deemed more Ete than the good that
accrued “from its possession.”

Few of our plants excel the hawthorn in wealth of
literary association. Chaucer tells us how for the May-day
festival all went forth into the fields

To fetch the flowres freshe, and braunche and blome,
Fresh garlandes of the hawthorne

being specially sought. The old poet revelled in “ the
month of Maie,” and found in it a theme on which he
delighted to dwell. In one of his poems he bids us mark

The faire blooming of the hawthorne tree,
Who, finely cloathed in a robe of white,
Fills full the wanton eye with May’s delight.

1 Then was our Lord yled into a gardyn, and there the Jewes scorned
hym, and maden hym a crown of the braunches of the Albiespyne, that is
Whitethorn, that grew in the same gardyn, and settin yt vpon hys hed.—Sir
John Maundeville.

? Many of the old beliefs concerning plants were passing strange.
Googe tells us, for instance, in 1577, that “ Basyll is an hearbe that is vsed
to be set for the excellent sauoure that it hath: it is also good for the potte:
it is sowed in March and April and delighteth in sonny ground. Basyl is
best watred at noone. Theophrastus sayth that it prospreth best when it
is sowed with curses,” What is to be the objective of these imprecations
we do not learn, they should have some definite target, and it could scarcely
be the plant itself.

HAWTHORN II

In L’ Allegro of Milton we find the oft-quoted lines—

And every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale,

Some prosaic souls have ventured to assert that this
proceeding ‘has absolutely nothing to do with the tender
passion—that the hawthorn was merely a convenient land-
mark to assemble his flock of sheep around while he
numbered them—but we have seen that Goldsmith very
definitely indeed assigned the hawthorn’s shade to his
whispering lovers, while Burns, no less, ‘beneath the milk-
white thorn” introduces us to a “ youthful, loving, modest
pair,” who, whatever the engrossing subject of their
thoughts, are certainly not counting sheep. Moore,
apostrophising May and all its flowers, gives place pre-
eminent to the “ sweetly scented thorn” ; and Kirk White
writes of “fragrant hawthorn, snowy flowered.” Burns,
Keats, Scott, and many others of our poets have happy
reference in their works to the charm of the flower, though
space will scarce permit quotation.

It is curious to reflect how these May-day celebrations,
the mirth, the music, the dancing around the gaily decorated
Maypole, like the rejoicings in our homes around the
brightly lighted Christmas-tree bearing its gifts amidst
its verdure, are survivals of pagan observance. The whole
subject of Tree-Worship is very wonderful, and of
abounding interest. We read in the Bible of the worship
in the sacred groves, and we find the sacred tree an object
of adoration amongst the Chaldeans forty centuries before
the Christian era. We see it again on the slabs from
the palace-temples of Nineveh and on the ancient buildings
of a bygone race in Mexico, while the Greeks sought

12 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

their oracles, as did the Druids of Britain and Gaul, amidst
the oak groves. Ancient Persia, and ancient India, no less
show in their sculpture the veneration for the sacred tree,
and it would appear to be a cult common to almost all
forms of primitive religion the wide world over, and in
some mysterious way respondent and dependent on the
Tree of Life in the Paradise of God.

The fruit of the hawthorn was held in much esteem
by the earlier writers, thus we find William Coles, in his
delightful book Adam in Eden, published in the year
1657, declaring that “the Powder of the Berries, or the
seeds of the Berries being given to drink in Wine, is
generally held to be singular good for the Dropsy.” He
also affirms that “the Flowers steeped three days in Wine
and afterwards distilled in Glasse, and the water thereof
drunk, is a Soveraigne Remedy for the Pleurisy and for
inward tormenting paines, which is also signified by the
prickles that grow on this Tree.”

This significance of the prickles is an allusion to the
lively faith held by our forebears in what is called the
Doctrine of Signatures. This belief was that God in His
goodness to man, not only created herbs of healing for
the woes of suffering humanity, but also impressed them
with a definite sign of their special service, so that it needed
but reverend care and thoughtful observation to enable
the sufferer to see the guiding hand of Providence and
find the alleviation that he sought. In the present case the
prickles, prompt to wound, were a reminder of the sharp
pains of disease that this plant could in consequence heal.
Coles, therefore, declares elsewhere that “the distilled water
of the Flowers of hawthorne is not onely cooling, but drawing

TRAVELLER'S JOY 13

also, for it is found by good experience that if Cloathes
and Spunges be wet in the said Water and applyed to any
place whereinto Thornes, or Splinters, have entered and
be there abiding, it will notably draw them forth, so that
the Thorne gives a Medicine for its own pricking, as
many other things do besydes, if they be observed.”

In the fourteenth century, or Decorated period, of Gothic
architecture a great use was made of natural forms in the
wood and stone carvings, flooring tiles, and so forth. Thus
we find the hop, bryony, nut, oak, maple, rose, and many
other plants, and amongst these the foliage and fruit of
the hawthorn is often beautifully introduced. The
cathedrals of Exeter, Winchester, Lincoln, Ely, and
Wells, afford excellent examples of this use of one plant.
Botanically the hawthorn is the Crategus Oxyacantha.

TRAVELLER’S JOY (Ciematis Virarpa)

Trailing for long distances over the hedges, and especially
in chalk districts, will be found the ‘Traveller’s Joy,” a
name suggestive of its appreciation by the wayfarer. Like
the bindweed, hop, and divers other climbers that support
themselves by the aid of other plants, it has a keen sense
of looking after its own interests, throwing its stems and
leaves well forward into the air and sunlight at the expense
of the other hedgerow plants. The scientific name is
Clematis Vitalba. The Traveller’s Joy has no tendrils,
but supports itself very firmly by twisting its leaf stems
tightly round any practicable branch of hawthorn, or maple,
or guelder rose, or whatever else may be available “ re-
compensing well the strength they borrow with the grace

14 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

they lend,” as the poet hath it, though the views of its
neighbours in the hedgerow might be somewhat differently
expressed, including such mere prose as aggression, suffoca-
tion, and such like unpoetic language. The clustering
flowers, a whitish-green in colour and fragrant in odour,
are succeeded by the fruits, each little fruit, botanically
called an achene, being terminated by a long and feathery
awn of a pale silvery-grey colour. These clusters are
produced abundantly and form a very noticeable and
attractive feature. From their soft, fluffy appearance and
colour the plant is sometimes called ““Old Man’s Beard,”
while it is also known as “‘ Virgin’s Bower,” from an old legend
that the Virgin Mary, during the flight into Egypt, found
rest and shelter beneath its shade from the noonday heat.
The plant lends itself very happily to covering and festoon-
ing trellis-work, and the clothing of our summer-house
if we so please." When gathered in the fruiting stage it
retains its charm for a long time, and is a notable addition
to our hedgerow bouquet, no longer, as in the Summer,
of floral gatherings, but now selected from the wealth of
Autumn, of scarlet hips and crimson haws, of the coral-
like fruits of the spindle tree, the orange-yellow foliage
of the beech, the deep purple-bronze of the guelder rose
sprays—a mass of beautiful and most varied colour.

1 As concerning Arbors, Seats, etc., in Orchards and Gardens, 1 advise
men to make them of /rwit-trees, rather then of Przvef, or other rambling
stuffe, which yeelds no profit, but only for shade. If you make them of
Cherry-trees, Plum-trees, or the like, there will be the same advantage for
shade, and all the Fruits superadded. All that can be objected is, that
Fruit-trees are longer in growing up then Przvet, Virgine Bower, or the like,
whereof avbors are commonly made. It is answered. Though /ruit-trees
are something longer in covering an Avdor, then some other things, yet
they make sufficient amends in their lasting and bearing fruits—Austen’s
Treatise of Fruit Trees, 1657.

PRIVET 15

PRIVET (Licusrrum Vuucare)

Noticeable from their sombre colour amongst the other
wild fruits of the countryside are the clusters of black
berries of the privet. Though so commonly found in
our hedgerows, the privet is really a wild plant; its true
home is in the woods and copses, where it attains a height
of some seven or eight feet, and it is found in this wild
state over most of Europe and throughout Western Asia.
It forms the subject of our second illustration.

The privet cannot quite be classed as an evergreen,
though it practically amounts to this, since most of the
leaves remain on the stems until they are thrust off by the
succeeding growth in Spring. When the season is a hard
one, or the position is exposed the foliage often assumes
a dull purple or bronze-colour. The leaves, it will be
noticed in our illustration, grow in pairs, are very simple in
form, and have their margins one continuous line ; there 1s
no notching of their edges. They are bitter and astringent
to the taste, so that they offer no great temptation to
horses or cattle, though we sometimes find sheep and
goats will nibble at them.

The flowers of the privet are found in May and
June, growing in dense clusters at the ends of the upper
stems. They are white in colour, and have a strong
and not altogether agreeable odour. Such at least is
our own verdict, but tastes proverbially differ, and we see
that one writer calls them ‘sweet scented blossoms,”
while another credits them with “ possessing an agreeable
fragrance.” After these somewhat offensive or altogether
delightful flowers succeed the berries, and these, if un-

16 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

molested by the blackbirds, thrushes, bull-finches, and
other birds to whom they are acceptable, remain on the
plant throughout the winter. Though we are most
familiar with them in their dense black stage, when they
are naturally most noticeable, they commence their career
a bright and rather raw green. If we open a berry we
find that it contains two cells or seed-chambers, and in
each of these are one or two seeds. One’s_ broad
idea of a berry is that it is ordinarily a round thing ;
however true this may be as a general working principle
to go upon, the fruit of the privet is more pronouncedly
globular even than most. When bruised and submitted to
heavy pressure the berries will yield an oil of fair quality,
which in some parts of the Continent becomes an article
of commerce.

The privet in scientific garb is the Ligustrum vulgare.
The genuine name is derived from the Latin word J/igo,
to bind, the long pliant stems being available for tying
up bundles, while the specific name indicates the common-
ness of the plant. Why it should be called privet does
not very clearly appear. By some of the older writers
it is called prim, print, and primprint. It has been
suggested that the name prim has reference to the neat
and orderly clipping that it is willing to undergo, but
while we must perforce admit that every plant-name
has a meaning we must be equally ready to admit that
this meaning is often obscure or entirely lost. The
ancients often mixed up the names terribly, thus in the
middle ages the plant they called Ligustrum or privet was
what we now know as the primrose, and if we go some
centuries back the various names were so interchanged,

BUCKTHORN 17

from defective translation, imperfect knowledge of the
plants and other causes, that it becomes often quite
impossible to arrive at any safe conclusion as to the plant
intended.

BUCKTHORN (Ruamnus Catuarticus)

Another common plant bearing black berries is the
buckthorn. This is found in hedges and copses fairly
abundantly throughout the country, but thrives best in
chalk districts. When growing really wild and beyond
the levelling influence of the hedge-cutter’s shears it
reaches a height of some twelve feet or so. The main
branches bear thorns not a few, while the smaller
branches often terminate in a sharp spine. The wood
of the buckthorn is hard, and is sometimes used in
turnery from its density of texture, but is too small in
section to be of any extended value in the arts. The
leaves are of a bright clear green colour, elliptical in
form, strongly veined, and deeply toothed. They grow
in alternate arrangement on the stems, and from their
axils spring rather large clusters of four-petalled greenish-
yellow blossoms ; these will be found in May and June.

After the flowers have passed away they are succeeded
by numerous round berries of shining surface, at first green,
but by September of a bluish-black colour ; these are about
as large as a pea, and each contains four smooth hard
seeds. When these berries are bruised they are found to
contain a greenish pulp that is bitter and nauseous to the
taste, and from this pulp is prepared the syrup of buckthorn,
a rather potent and uncertain medicine. Though long
holding a place in the pharmacopeeia, it is little used in

2

18 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

regular practice, but finds a home in rustic pharmacy, some-
times as many as twenty berries being given as a dose.’
Lyte, in his translation of the Herbal of Dodoneus quaintly
declares that ‘they be not meete to be ministered but to
young and lustie people of the countrie, who doe set more
store of their money than their lives,” preferring rather
to risk hedgerow drugs and old wives’ prescriptions than to
call in the trained practitioner. The berries are a good
deal used in veterinary practice.

The berries when gathered in an unripe state yield a
yellow dye, employed for staining Turkey and Morocco
leather and other purposes, but if they be matured the
result is a green dyeing material. The berries pressed and
then boiled with a little alum make the pigment known
to painters in water-colour as sap-green. The stems have
also some little tinctorial value, or at least had in the past,
as in these latter days commercial facilities and enter-
prise bring to our shores the finest products of the world,
and the home-grown article cannot always compete with
them. A preparation of the stem, either as powder or in
form of a decoction, was once in repute as a tonic, and
as an application to inflamed eyes or obstinate cutaneous
trouble ; but here again the resources of the world have
supplanted what may once have been good by that which
is better.

Botanically our plant is the Rhamnus catharticus, the

1 They are given being beaten into pouder from one dram to a dram
and a halfe: divers do number the berries, who give to strong bodies from
fifteen to twenty or more; but it is better to breake them and boile them
in fat flesh broth without salt, and to give the broth to drinke.—Gerard,
Generall Historie of Plantes, 1633. The book passed through a great many
editions ; the date we assign is merely that on the title-page of our own copy.

SWEET BRIAR 19

word Rhamnus being derived from the Greek word for
branch, in allusion to the branching spreading growth of
the plant, while the specific name bears testimony to its
cathartic medicinal properties. To entomologists the plant
is of interest as being the food-plant of the caterpillar of
the Brimstone butterfly, the Gonopteryx rhamni. This is
that common and beautiful sulphur-coloured butterfly,
which, though emerging from the chrysalis in Summer,
hybernates in some sheltered spot, and comes out to
gladden our eyes in the bright Springtime, when a day
of sunshine and increasing warmth tempts it forth.

SWEET BRIAR (Rosa Rusicrinosa)

The various kinds of wild roses that deck our
hedgerows in the Summer with their fragrant and delicate
blossoms, contribute no less to their adornment in the
Autumn, when their scarlet “hips” are welcome items
in the general wealth of colour of fruit and foliage so
characteristic of that season of the year. One of the
most charming of this goodly company is the sweet briar,
of which Plate III. gives us an illustration in its fruiting
stage.

The stems of the plant, and the under-surfaces of the
leaves, are abundantly supplied with small glands, and
these yield, when pressed, the aromatic scent that gives
the shrub its best-known name. An alternative name is
the eglantine, and this is the one that is generally bestowed
on it by the poets. The name has a poetic ring about
it, but its origin is very obscure, and if we accept it as
referring to the rather specially prickly nature of the

20 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

plant,’ has a basis of very distinct prose indeed ; to tear
one’s clothes, to lacerate one’s fingers, being proceedings
that carry very little suggestion of sentiment with them.

Sweet is the rose, but grows upon a brere,
Sweet is the eglantine, but pricketh nere,?

The plant was often transplanted to the garden, thus
Spenser tells us how

Art striving to compayre
With Nature did an arber green dispred,

?

and in this goodly bower of “wanton yvie” and other

plants, a place of honour was bestowed on

The fragrant Eglantine which spred

Her prickling armes, embrayled with roses red,

Which daintie odours round about them threw ;

And all within with flowres was garnished,

That when wild Zephyrus amongst them blew,

Did breth out bounteous smels, and painted colours shew.

Chaucer, too, writes of one who sat embowered, not in
“wanton yvie,” but in a cool recess of which “ greene laurey
tree” was a notable feature, but which yielded also

A delicious smell,
According to the eglentere full well.

In another passage in the same poem, The Flowre and
the Leafe, we find that

1 The Latin word for a prickle is acu/eus. Softened in old French into the
adjective aiglent, from aculentus, covered with prickles, we arrive by easy
stages to aiglentier and the modern French eg/antier. We must remember
that after the Norman Conquest French was the language of culture in
England for centuries.

2 Spenser. Sonnet 26.

WEET BRIAR

SWEET BRIAR 21

The green herbere
With Sicamour was set and eglatere,!

The hips of the various roses are pleasantly sweet to the
taste and especially when mellowed by a little frost, but
within the outer covering the one-seeded carpels lie
ensconced in a bed of soft hairs, and if any of these be
swallowed they prove most irritating to the throat. One
sometimes finds these hips an item in the repasts of our
forefathers. Gerard, we see, writes in 1633, “ The fruit
when it is ripe maketh most pleasant meats and banquetting
dishes, as tarts and such-like; the making wherof I
commit to the cunning cooke.” As, however, he adds
“and teeth to eat them in the rich man’s mouth,” it would
seem to show that even the best culinary skill the wealthy
could command found them a little difficult to deal with.
At all events, we have in these days of world-wide commerce
so much greater choice of fruit than our ancestors that
these hips will probably henceforth be handed over un-
grudgingly to the birds.

Conserve of roses figures in the pharmacopeeia ; while
acidulous and refrigerant it is chiefly used as a vehicle
for other medicines. It is prepared by beating up the
pulp of the fruit of the dog-rose with three times its
weight of white sugar. In Russia and Sweden this
sweetened pulp, after fermentation, is made into a kind
of wine.

We not infrequently find on the wild rose a curious
flossy tuft of a dull crimson colour. It is indeed so

* In like manner Barnfield, a less read poet, in his Affectionate Shepherd,
writes,
I would make cabinets for thee, my love,
Sweet-smelling arbours made of Eglantine.

22 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

common that one old name of the dog-rose is the canker-
rose. It is a morbid growth, an excrescence produced by
the puncture of an insect. On cutting it open we find
within it several cavities and in each of these a maggot.
This morbid development was by the older writers called
bedeguar, and, like most other things, was held of medicinal
value.

FIELD-ROSE (Rosa ArveEnsis)

The field-rose, the subject of our fourth illustration,
is somewhat less common than the dog-rose, though in
many parts of England and Ireland it is abundantly to be
encountered. In Scotland it is much less freely seen. It
flowers at a rather different period, for though there is a
time common to both when the dog-rose and field-rose are
flowering together, the first is in bloom earlier than this and
the second later. The field-rose trails many feet with its
slender branches. This is a feature so marked that the
plant is sometimes called the trailing dog-rose. Its leaves
are shining, prickles small, flowers white, and with little or
no scent. They cluster together more than the blossoms
of the dog-rose or sweet briar, and the fruit is nearly
globular. Another distinctive feature is that the calyx
segments which we see very markedly crowning the wild
briar hip, fall off in the present plant, giving at once a very
different appearance. A glance from our third illustration
to our fourth will make this point very evident. The
sweet briar is in botanical parlance the Rosa rubiginosa,
the dog-rose the R. canina, and the field-rose the
R. arvensis.

Those who would desire to dry plants, or at least their

FIELD ROSE.

es

HAZEL 23

leaves and flowers, as the fruit is ordinarily not amenable
to treatment, should gather them in dry weather, place
the specimens between blotting-paper, and then submit
them to a heavy weight, being careful in the first place
to arrange and display them in a natural manner. They
should from time to time be examined and the blotting-
paper changed. Heat is sometimes adopted, and with
some plants it acts very well. The plants in this case
should be arranged between sheets of blotting-paper, placed
in a broad flat pan, covered over to a depth of about half
an inch with dry sand and then put before the fire, or in
the oven if it is not too hot. In three or four hours the
specimens should be perfectly dried. Another method is
to place the plants between blotting-paper and then iron
each individually, very gradually, and with the iron not
too hot. The essence of this method lies in the word
gradually. It takes time and patience, but the results often
come out very well.

HAZEL (Coryius AvELLANA)

Though the hazel is so commonly met with in our
hedges, we must not forget that, like the hawthorn and
some other denizens of the hedgerow, it may really take
rank as one of our trees, not indeed in competition with
the kingly oak, the far-spreading beech, the aspiring
poplar, but a tree nevertheless. At the hands of the hedge-
clipper it has to share and share alike in the general lopping
and trimming, but when we find it in woodland or copse,
where it grows as Nature wills it, it may attain to a very
considerable height and girth.

24 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

The flowers are developed in the early Spring while the
tree is yet leafless. These flowers, inconspicuous in them-
selves, grow in clusters, the male flowers being grouped into
long, pendulous catkins, while the female blossoms are in
minute tufts closely adherent to the stems, and only notice-
able, from the crimson stigmas, two from each of the little
flowers, that surround these clusters. The leaves, as may
be seen from our illustration, Plate V., are large and
‘rounded in form, having their outlines strongly serrated,
and the veining very conspicuous. The under-surfaces
are more or less downy to the touch. When young the
foliage is of a clear green, but as it grows older it soon
becomes of a somewhat dull colour. As Autumn comes
on the leaves turn a good strong yellow and remain on
the stems until the season is far advanced.

The stems of the hazel are very pliable.’ Virgil, centuries
ago, commended them for binding other plants. They
are used nowadays for weaving into hampers and baskets,
the making of hurdles, hoops for casks, and the like. Cut
up into faggots they yield a very good fuel for the cottager,
and they supply an excellent charcoal for the making of
gunpowder, the preparation of filtering beds, and so forth.
The tree will also give us walking-sticks or fishing-rods,
and, where the branches are sufficiently large, the wood
may be used in cabinet work, as it is beautifully mottled
and variegated.

The ancient Romans observed the hazel with particular

! Kate, like the hazel twig,
Is straight and slender, and as brown in hue
As hazel nuts, and sweeter than the kernels.
—Taming of the Shrew.

HAZEL 25

care in the Spring, drawing from it good or bad omens
for the harvest, and it is still a general belief that a good
nut year is also-a good wheat year. For centuries the
hazel rod was held- to possess* powers of divination, and
it was employed to discover hidden treasure or subterranean
springs, and to detect criminals. Grasped lightly in the
hand it was thought to turn by some occult power and
thus indicate the object sought. The hazel grows wild
all over temperate Europe and in many districts in Asia,
so that we must not run away with the idea that “ going
nutting”” is at all an exclusively British pastime. The
demand for the fruit is immense, and thousands of bushels
are brought each year to our shores from Spain, Italy, and
Syria to supplement our home supply. The nuts grow
ordinarily in small clusters of two or three together, and
each is surrounded by an envelope of scales, united at their
bases and deeply jagged and lobed. These are the now
much enlarged scales that heretofore protected the little
flowers in the boisterous days of March. This envelope
or enclosing cup, together with the nut therein, presently
turns brown, a sign of approaching maturity of the nut, and
when it is fully ripe it falls out of this cup. Such nuts
are by the rustics called “slip-shucks.” These nuts, so
freely provided by the bounty of Nature, are not delect-
able to the genus boy alone, but supply most welcome
provender to several kinds of birds—as, for example, the
nuthatch—that are armed with sufficiently strong beaks
to pierce the woody shells, while squirrels, notably, and
divers other small animals find them most acceptable for
a present feast, and still more invaluable for storage
in view of the coming days when the rich abundance of

26 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

Autumn? will have given place to the dearth of Winter.
We may sometimes find on cracking a nut open that in
lieu of the kernel we had anticipated we are confronted by
a stolid and corpulent maggot ; this, if we had not thus
crashed in upon him, would presently have become the
beetle that to entomologists is known as the nut-weevil.

We sometimes declare, as an evidence of concentration,
that the whole matter we are dealing with lies in a
nutshell, while the empty shell may be accepted as the
symbol of worthlessness. Thus Gower, in his Confessio
Amantis, writes—

And so recorde I my lesson,

And write in my memoriall

What I to hir telle shall

Right all the matter of my tale,
But all is nis worthe a nutte shale.

Shakespeare, seeing poetry and beauty everywhere, puts
even a discarded nutshell to honoured service, for he
tells us of sweeet Queen Mab, the Queen of Fairyland,
that

Her chariot is an empty hazel nut,
Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub,
Time out of mind the fairies’ coach-makers.

How delightful could we but in some quiet woodland

1 Season of mists and yellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom friend of the maturing sun,
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-caves run ;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease.
KEATS.

HAZEL

HAZEL 27

glade, far from the busy haunts of men, see this stately
procession and the nutshell coach rumbling along in its
midst, while the hare-bells rang a joyous peal of welcome!

The hazel is in botanic nomenclature the Corylus
Avellana. The first of these names is centuries old, and
it is surmised that the ancient Greeks gave this title to
the plant from their word for a cap, the fruit in its husk
suggesting this idea of covering to them. Pliny tells us
that the best nuts came from Avella, a town of Campania,
hence the specific name Avellana. The French call the
nuts avelines, the Spanish avellanas, and the Portuguese
avellaas; while our popular name, hazel-nut, is pure
Anglo-Saxon. In Germany it is the Aase/nusse, in Denmark
hasselnod, in Holland the hazelnoot.

The power of divination, that was held to exist in the
stems, was extended to the fruit also. Thus an old writer
affirms that “being broken assunder they doe foreshow
the sequell of the yeare, as the expert Kentish husband-
men have observed by the living things found in them ;
as, if they finde an ant they foretell plenty of graine to
ensue; if a white worme like a gentill or magot,
then they prognosticate murren of beasts and cattell ; if
a spider, then we shall have a pestilence or some such-
like sicknesse to follow amongst men. These things the
learned also have noticed and observed, for Matthiolus,
writing upon Dioscorides, saith that “ before they have an
hole in them they containe in them either a flie, a spider,
or a worme: if a flie, then warre ensueth ; if a creeping
worme, then scarcitie of victuals; if a running spider,
then followeth great sicknesse and mortalitie.”’ With what
awe would the simple woodcutter regard so dire a presage

28 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

of the coming woe, listening in anticipation, and with
shivering dread, in the quiet sunny lane, to the march of
the foe, or to the low moaning of the foodless, and, per-
chance, hearing in the gentle breeze the rustling of the
swift wings of the destroying angel bringing vengeance
and desolation on the unconscious land.

It has for centuries been the custom to burn nuts on
the Eve of All-Hallows, drawing omens and _foretelling
the future, but these observances have ordinarily been of
a more or less festive character ; thus Burns tells how—

Some merry-friendly countrie folks
Together did convene,

To burn their nuts; e’en pon their stocks,
And haud their Hallowe'en. °

These blazing nuts were often used as love-charms,
their readiness to catch fire, the vigour of their crackling,
the intensity of their glowing all being regarded as
symptomatic of the depth or otherwise of the affection
they were employed to test—

Two hazel nuts I threw into the flame,

And to each nut I gave a sweetheart’s name;
This, with the loudest bounce we sore amazed,
That, with a flame of brightest colour blazed ;
As blazed the nut, so may thy passion grow,
For ’twas thy nut that did so brightly glow.

The hazel nut yields an oil that is of much value for
the lubrication of delicate machinery, such as watch-work,
the works of sewing machines, and the like. Evelyn
declares that “ these nuts, being fully ripe, and peeled in
warm water, make a pudding very little, if at all, inferior,
to that our ladies make of almonds.” One old medical
book, we see, says, and truly enough, that “‘ nuts eaten alone

GUELDER ROSE 29

in too great quantity are not to be commended, for they
are said to be hard of digestion, yet if any one be so much
taken with them that he cannot refrain from them, let him
eat Raisons together with them, so that the moisture of the
one may qualifie the drynesse of the other.” This clearly
is the philosophy of that popular dessert dish, almonds
and raisins, bane and antidote producing together a very
pleasant blend.

Culpeper, we note, in his Astrologo-Botanical Discourse
on Herbs, edition of 1681, flies so markedly in the face of
general belief as to specially prescribe nuts as a medicine
for pulmonary trouble. Conscious of his departure from
accepted practice he breaks out somewhat fiercely— Why
should the vulgar so familiarly affirm that eating nuts
causeth shortness of breath, than which nothing can be
falser? Or, how can that which strengthens the lungs
cause shortness of breath? I knew Tradition was a friend
to errors before, but never that he was the father of
slanders: or are men’s tongues so given to slander one
another that they must slander nuts too, to keep their
tongues in use? If any thing of the nut be stopping ’tis
the husks and shells, and nobody is so mad as to eat them,
and the red skin which covers the kernels, which you
may easily pull off. And thus have I made an apology for
nuts, which cannot speak for themselves.”

GUELDER ROSE (Visurnum Oputvs)

Beautiful alike in Summer and in Autumn, the guelder
rose must be by no means disregarded in our review of
Nature’s pageantry. Seen in June it is a mass of creamy-

30 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

white blossom, revisited in August or September it is
bedecked with abundant clusters of ruddy berries, globular
in form, and each containing a single seed. These clusters,
from their weight, are ordinarily more or less drooping, and
vary very greatly in colour, those portions of the bunch
that enjoy the full sunlight being much deeper in tint than
the rest, so that, alike in collective bunch and in individual
berry, we get portions that are a deep crimson, contrasting
with others passing in all gradations from this to a clear
golden yellow. When rather more than fully ripe the
berries become almost black and lose much of their original
attractiveness.

The guelder rose is abundant in most coppices and
skirting the margins of the woodlands, and not unfrequently
finds a place in the hedgerows, a somewhat moist situation
seeming to suit it best. It is really a small tree, attaining
a height, maybe, of some twelve feet or so, but of necessity
has in the hedgerow to take its share in the general levelling
down.

In the large flower-heads of the wild guelder rose we
find two entirely distinct forms: in the centre the blossoms
are closely clustered together, individually small, but perfect
in structure; while surrounding these there is a ring of
much larger flowers that are reduced to a flat, disk-like,
five-lobed corolla, stamen-less, pistil-less. It is this outer
ring that is the conspicuous and attractive feature, if not
to the botanist, at least to the lover of the quaint and
picturesque. The tree is sometimes called the rose-elder ;
it was the standard name for it two or three hundred years
ago amongst the herbalists, but the name is not a very
happy one. If we are content to view the trees at such

GUELDER ROSE 31

a distance as to lose all detail the elder and the guelder
rose will appear of about the same height, and are each
seen to be bearing rather large clusters of white flowers,
but there all resemblance ceases. The foliage of the
guelder rose is not in the least like that of the elder,
the flowers of the elder bear no similarity to those of
the guelder rose, voila tout. The leaves of the guelder
rose turn a very rich crimson-purple in the Autumn, and
remain for some considerable time on the tree.

The snowball tree, often met with in gardens and
shrubberies, with its great globular masses of blossom, is
a cultivated variety of our plant. In this, instead of merely
an outer ring of large and barren flowers, all are enlarged
and barren, one result, of course, being that these garden
guelder roses, beautiful as they are, have not the added
charm of clustering fruit for our delectation.*

The berries of the wild guelder rose look fairly tempting,
but if tasted they are found to be bitter and no longer
inviting. Our older writers on plants were so accustomed
to ascribe the most wonderful healing properties to almost
everything they could lay hands on, that it is really a
matter for wonder to find one of these venerable authorities
declaring that “concerning the faculties of these, and the
berries, there is nothing found in any writer, neither can
we set downe anything hereof of our owne knowledge.”

In the botanical lists our tree is the Viburnum Opulus.
Virgil, writing many a century ago, often incidentally

' There come forth goodly floures of a white colour, and do grow thicke
and closely compact together in quantitie and bulke of a man’s hand, or rather
bigger, of great beauty, and sauoring like the floures of the Haw-thorne: but

in my gardens there growth not any fruit vpon this tree, nor in any other
place, for ought that I can vnderstand.—Gerard, 1633.

32 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

mentioned plants in his poems, and amongst these we find
reference to the Viburnum, but it is not at all possible
to assign satisfying English equivalents to many of his
plant-names, and the present case is one of these many.
If we venture so far as to say that perhaps his plant was
the guelder rose, and that more probably it was not, we have
travelled as far as we dare go in this direction. In the
middle ages the monks, who were the great herbalists of
those days, ministering alike to the souls and bodies of men,
gave the Latinised name of Opu/us to our tree, and this
by the common people was corrupted to ople-tree, the
name by which Gerard and other writers on plants in
the vulgar tongue refer to it. We have high authority
for declaring that a rose by any other name would be
as sweet, and our present plant, whether we call it ople or
elder, or anything else, is a charming acquisition to our
goodly store of woodland wealth of beauty.

WOODY NIGHTSHADE (Sotanum Dutcamara)

The woody nightshade, Solanum Dulcamara, claims
next our attention. It is figured on Plate VI. and one
or two points will probably at once attract our notice
as we study its likeness. Our assumption, by the way,
that our representation is a likeness will not, we trust,
shock our readers, for it, and its fellows are, to the best
of our ability, true presentments. In all cases our studies
have been made directly from Nature, and no leaf, or
flower, or berry, in these pages but had its living
counterpart.

‘The first point that cannot fail to attract notice is

WOODY NIGHTSHADE 33

the great variation of colour found in the berries of this
plant as they travel on from birth to maturity. Even
on a single small bunch we may often get this variety of
tint ; as many colours, maybe, as berries. The fruit, starting
life a bright clear green, goes through a series of gradations
until it finally becomes a rich crimson, and these changes
are very subtle and very interesting to watch, We may
perhaps realise them better if we take our colour box and
mix blue and yellow together. From this blend we shall
obtain a green that stands for stage one in the life history
of our berry. If we gradually eliminate the blue the green
becomes yellower and yellower, until it stands presently
before us pure yellow pigment, and if we now add a little
vermilion to this, our yellow begins to turn orange, and
even more and more orange as we add more scarlet, until
we have added so much that all suggestion of the former
orange disappears, and the result is pure red. We may
see the same interesting variation and transition in the
fruit of the black bryony, the plant we have figured
in our eighth illustration.

Another curious point that our sketch reveals in the
growth of the plant is the peculiar way in which the
leaves persist in facing in one direction, while the clusters
of flowers, and consequently of fruit, are equally deter-
mined to face another. One may gather a hundred pieces
of the woody nightshade, and this strange perversity is
rampant in them all. It is so ordinarily the habit of plants
to direct their leaves and their flowers alike upwards towards
the sunlight, that any deviation from a rule so salutary,
or custom so general, cannot fail to be noticeable.

The generic name Solanum is derived, according to

3

34 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

some authorities, from the Latin word Solamen, in reference
to the medicinal value of some of the plants of the genus.
The specific name Dulcamara is compounded from the two
Latin words dulcis, sweet, and amara, bitter; and so an
alternative popular name for the plant is the bitter-sweet.
These names are suggested by the fact that if one tastes
a piece of the stem it is at first bitter in the mouth, but
afterwards sweet. The monkish name, 4maradulcis, places
matters in their proper order, while the botanical Dulcamara
does not.

The somewhat weak stems vary in colour from ash-
colour to dull purple. They ordinarily force their way
amongst the other and sturdier plants of the hedgerow
or copse, finding amongst these a welcome support. The
leaves, it will be observed, grow alternately on the stem,
the lower ones being somewhat egg or heart-shaped,
while those higher on the plant have the form we have
depicted in our illustration. The flowers are to be found
during June, July, and August, so that before the later
ones appear we have the first transformed into fruits, and
we can ordinarily gather at the same time whichever we
desire. The corolla is divided into five very deeply cut
segments that are turned sharply back; it is ordinarily
deep purple in colour, but may sometimes be found of
a pure white. The bright yellow anthers in the centre
are a very noticeable feature." The blossoms are similar
in form to those of the tomato, a near relative of the
bitter-sweet. The berries, it will be noted, are not

1 The Flowers come forth at the top and sides of the Branches,
standing many together upon short stalks, which consist of five narrow
and long violet-purple coloured leaves, with a long yellow Pointel in the
middle sticking forth—Adam in Eden, 1657.

WOODY NIGHTSHADE 35

globular in form, but are considerably greater in their
length than width, the form technically termed ovate.
Each contains numerous seeds.

The plant by common repute is very poisonous, and
we certainly should not advise any one to lunch off the
berries. One Dr. Woodville, writing in 1790, declares
that thirty of these berries killed a dog in less than three
hours ; but, on the contrary, a Dr. Duval asserted that he
gave sixty to a dog without any appreciable results. This
clearly is one’s opportunity to introduce, with variation,
that slightly threadbare remark: ‘‘ Who shall decide when
doctors (and their canine patients) disagree?’ There are
undoubted cases recorded of their—the berries, not the
doctors—noxious and even fatal effects on children. One
old writer, we see, says that “the Berries of Bittersweet
stamped with rusty Bacon, applyd to that Joynt of the
Finger that is trubled with a Felon hath been found by
divers Country people, who are most subject thereunto, to
be very successful for the curing of the same’; while
another says that the “iuyce is good for those that haue
fallen from high places and haue beene thereby bruised,
or dry beaten.” The condition of one thus dry beaten
is not quite clear to us, but we imagine that though it
seems here an alternative to being merely bruised, the two
conditions are practically the same, that, in fact, if the
skin be not broken one may apply this “iuyce,” but that
it would be less advisable to do so in the case of an open
wound. As none of our readers will apply it, probably,
in either case, the discussion of the point is merely academic,
and will not, in its result, affect the bills of mortality.

Until quite recently the decoction of the stems has

36 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

found a recognised place in the pharmacopeeia, as a remedy
for cutaneous ailments or for rheumatic trouble, as much
as three pints a day having been administered ; but its
effects, depending partly perhaps on the mode of preparation,
and partly on the idiosyncrasy of the recipient, would appear
to be rather uncertain, and a plant that is recorded as
causing nausea, palpitation, convulsive twitchings, and
syncope, is best left alone. ‘‘ The Sheepherds in Germany
doe use to hang it about their Cattle’s neck when they
are troubled with a Swiming in the Head, causing
them to turne round as if they were bewitched, and therefore
they say it removth Witchcrafts both in Men and Beasts,
but that Swiming in the Head is no effect of Witchcraft,
but proceeds from a Naturall Cause, for which this Plant
is a specifick Remedy, as it is for all such-like svdaine
distempers whatsoever, being hung about the Neck, and
that is not farre from the Head.” This, at all events, is
not so dangerous a remedy as the decoction, and some of
our readers who suffer from vertigo might be willing to
try it, though we imagine one’s appearance, thus be-
garlanded, unless perhaps on May-day, might lead to
considerable and pointed comment.

Our quotation is from Adam in Eden, an altogether
delightful old book. The title-page is very quaint and
runs as follows: “ Adam in Eden, or Nature’s Paradise.
The History of Plants, Fruits, Herbs, and Flowers. With
their several Names, whether Greek, Latin, or English ;
the places where they grow ; their Descriptions and Kinds ;
their times of flourishing and decreasing ; as also their
several Signatures, Anatomical appropriations, and par-
ticular Physical Vertues; Together with necessary

BLACK NIGHTSHADE 37

Observations on the Seasons of Planting and gathering of
our English Simples, with Directions how to preserve them
in their Compositions or otherwise. A work of such
a Refined and Useful Method that the Arts of Physick
and Chirurgerie are so clearly laid open, that Apothecaries,
Chirurgions, and all other ingenuous Practitioners, may
from our own Fields and Gardens, best agreeing with our
English Bodies, on emergent and sudden occasions com-
pleatly furnish themselves with cheap, easie, and wholesome
Cures for any part of the Body that is ill-affected. For
the Herbarists greater benifit there is annexed a Latin and
English Table of the several names of Simples ; With
another more particular Table of the Diseases, and their
Cures, treated of in this so necessary Work. By William
Coles, Herbarist.” This is indeed a noble title-page.
The edition that came under our notice was published

in the year 1657.

BLACK NIGHTSHADE (Sotanum Nicrum)

The black nightshade, in botanical nomenclature the
Solanum nigrum, is a very near relative of the woody
nightshade, but instead of rambling for yards over the
hedges it is content to remain humbly on the ground, while
its flowers, similar in form to those of its big brother, are
white. It is a common annual weed on cultivated ground,
springing up on the margins of fields. The flowers grow
in considerable clusters and are succeeded by the berries ;
these are globular in form, at first green, but ultimately
turning a dense black. The plant is more powerful in
its action than the woody nightshade, and possesses potent

38 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

narcotic properties. While used at times in cutaneous trouble,
its effects are too uncertain to make it at all a safe application.’
Orfila records a case where three children eat the berries,
and were promptly seized with giddiness and convulsions ;
all three died very quickly. From their dull black colour
and unpleasant taste these berries are less attractive to
children than are many others, and so they are preserved
thus far from the temptation of indulging at all freely
in them. We occasionally find the plant bearing berries
that not only begin by being green, but remain so, not
showing an inclination to turn the normal black; such
cases are, however, very exceptional. Some writers suggest
that the black nightshade, wherever seen, should be ex-
terminated ; but this is a counsel of perfection that, in
the case of a plant so abundant, will never be attained to,
nor indeed does one see why it should be, a much simpler
plan being to allow the plant itself to exterminate those
foolish enough to meddle with it, and thus enable them
to serve as awful warnings to the rest of us.

HOP (Humutvus Luputus)

Tapestrying the hedges and ascending the trunks of
the hedgerow trees may often be found the graceful festoons
of the hop. Charming as it is in itself it makes a very

1 While Gerard in his Generall History of Plantes commends it as being
“ good against” divers ailments, he adds: ‘ Notwithstanding that it hath these
vertues, yet it is not alwaies good that it should be applied vnto these
infirmities, for that many times there hapneth more dangers by applying of
these remedies than of the disease it selfe. They are not of such esteeme
that we should long insist vpon them, especially seeing wee are furnished
with such store of medicines lesse harmefull, yet seruing the same purpose.”
A sufficiently strong hint to let it alone.

HOP

HOP 39

bad neighbour, for its dense masses of foliage and numerous
tough and twining stems go far towards choking the general
mass of undergrowth. One may observe this very clearly
in Winter, when, the hop having died down, we may see
how ragged and thin the hedge at that point has become.
Extending, as the plant does, over the greater part of
England and having every appearance of being thoroughly
at home, it is yet a very doubtful point whether the
hop be truly indigenous. It has long been cultivated,
and it is probable that the hops of our hedgerows are
really the descendants of plants introduced centuries ago.
However this may be, there is no doubt that the con-
ditions here are so entirely favourable to its well-being
that it long ago determined to stay with us.

The root is perennial, and each Spring throws up a
vigorous mass of shoots. These, by the way, are sometimes
gathered and boiled and are said to be equal in flavour to
asparagus. They are highly commended, we see, in
Bryant’s Flora Dietetica. In the hop gardens, where the
plant is under cultivation, it becomes necessary each Spring
to remove some of the superabundant shoots, and these
cuttings are an acceptable article of diet. The stems
develop very quickly; they are tough, flexible, slightly
angular, far-reaching. The leaves grow in pairs and are
either heart-shaped or with three or five lobes, and these
latter are not at all unlike vine-leaves in general form.
These lobed leaves are ordinarily the lower ones and
are of considerable size, and we regret that the limited
dimensions of our illustration forbid our introduction of
one of this type. The leaves, whatever their shape, are
deeply toothed at their margins, very prominently veined,

40 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

and decidedly rough, almost prickly, in texture. Lobel '
called the hop the Vitis Septentrionalium, the vine of the
north, primarily because it supplied the northern nations
with their beer, as the southerners found in the vine the
source of their wine, but probably the vine-like foliage and
far-spreading growth of the hop had some little influence
too in the choice of his name.

The flowers of the hop are what are called dicecious, the
male flowers being on one plant, the female on another.
The male flowers are small and of a greenish-white ; the
plant bearing them is in rustic parlance sometimes called a
Jack-hop. The female flowers are stowed carefully away
in large cylindrical or ovoid heads or catkins that are con-
spicuous from their closely packed broad enveloping scales
or bracts. This is the state of things represented in our
drawing, Plate VIII. At the base of each of these scales
will be found nestled two little pistillate flowers. After the
flowering season is over, and to this we may assign some
time in July or August, this mass of overlapping scales,
often called a cone, continues to increase in size, and this
it does very rapidly. It is these matured cones that form
the hops of commerce, though to get these in perfection
the plant is placed under cultivation. It may appear that
our reference to the duration of the flowering time is
a little vague, but we have found by experience that much

' Lobel, born at Lisle in 1538, was a great lover of plants, travelling in
search of them over much of France, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany, He
also visited England and added much to the knowledge of our plants. Many
of these he cultivated in his garden at Hackney. He was a physician,
and of such repute that James I. appointed him in this capacity to his
Royal person. He finally settled down in England, dying in London in
the year 1616.

HOP 41

depends upon the season and the locality. When the
flowers do appear they last but a very short time. The
young cones are of a bright green colour, but as they
mature they become brown. ‘They are of a fragrant odour,
and especially when at all bruised, and are somewhat
harsh and astringent to the taste, owing to the presence
of a peculiar bitter principle which is termed by the
analysts lupulin.

Botanically the hop is the Humulus Lupulus. Its
generic name, it has been affirmed by one authority, has
been bestowed upon it from the rich soil’ in which the
plant flourishes ; but this idea is quite scouted by another
authority, who declares that as the plant without external
support could only grow along the ground, it derives its
name from the Latin word for soil, humus. It is really
difficult to decide which of these two explanations is the
more unsatisfactory. The Latin word does not emphasise
any special richness in the soil, while the second explana-
tion may be paralleled by saying that if a sailor did
not go to sea he would be a landsman, and therefore in
any case we may call him one. The hop has far too fine
a perception of taking care of itself at the expense of
other things to be ever found rambling helplessly over
the ground. Lupulus was at one time the officinal name
for the hop, and we find it so called in monastery records.

1 Meete plot for a hopyard once found as is told,
Make thereof account, as of jewell of gold.
Tusser, in June's Husbandrie. Elsewhere he says—
Ground grauellie, sandie, and mixed with clay,
Is naughtie for hops any maner of way;
Or if it be mingled with rubbish and stone,
For driness and barrennes, let it alone.

42 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

The meaning of the word is very obscure. It has been
suggested that this is the plant Pliny called the Lupus
salictarius, meaning willow-wolf, and that he so called it
from the tenacity with which it clung to the willows.
Hop has certainly no special delight in willows; on the
contrary, it prefers something considerably stouter. How-
ever, if it be not a particularly good wolf-story, it is an
excellent cock-and-bull story, and we must accept it on
that footing.

The ripened hops are sometimes gathered in the
country into pillows, as they are held to promote sleep.
This use of them came into great prominence when they
prescribed, and with benefit, to King George III., in the
year 1787. It is found in medical practice that, besides
producing restful sleep, the hops exercise considerable
soothing influence over the nerves, allay pain, reduce the
pulse, and give it steadiness. Infusum, Tinctura, and
Extractum Lupuli all hold place in our pharmacopeeia.
One old author, we see, declares that “‘the Decoction of
the Flowres and Tops are given with good successe to
those that have drunk any deadly poyson ;”’ while some
will to-day say that, far from being an antidote, it is, as
an important constituent in beer, a poison itself.

In Sweden and Norway the fibres of the hop stem
are made into strong cloth, stout cordage, and coarse
packing-paper. Though premiums were offered by the
Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and
Commerce in the year 1760, for the utilisation of the
plant in England, but little success seems to have attended
the experiment. It was, in fact, found that hemp could
be produced at a cheaper rate, and that it was of much

IVY 43

more value for the various trade purposes that were
then suggested.

The hop, alike in its wild and cultivated state, is
greatly exposed to damage from mildew, and the assaults
of insects.

IVY (Hepers HEtix)

We so naturally associate the idea of fruit-bearing
with Autumn that it is somewhat of a shock to find
that the two things, after all, are not at all necessarily
identical in point of time. Fruiting follows naturally upon
flowering, and at no great interval from it; the sequence
is, indeed, practically immediate, though the earlier stages
of transition from fully-developed flowers to fully-matured
fruit may not be visible. If, therefore, a plant has its
flowering season in October, its fruit will certainly not
be developed either in the preceding or the succeeding
September, but will assuredly be one of those gifts of
Nature that we value the more because they come in the
dark chilly days of frost-bound Winter, when so much
of floral interest is of necessity lost to us. Such a plant
is the Ivy. In like manner the hyacinth throws up
in the woods its quaint three-lobed seed-chambers, the
primrose its delicate five-pointed capsules, long ere the
swarthy reapers cut the golden wheat, and each has
passed away from our ken months before we, armed
with hooked stick and provided with a goodly basket,
set out to gather in our special harvest of luscious black-
berries or of well-filled nuts in the shortening days of
September.

Ivy in the hands of the gardeners has been developed

44 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

into a great many marked varieties, differing greatly in the
size and form of the leaves, the variation of their colour,
and so forth ; but even the common wild ivy plant of our
hedgerows and old walls exhibits a great difference in the
form of its foliage, the leaves being sometimes very large
and of very simple outline, heart-shaped or ovate, and
at other times small and acutely three-, five-, or even
seven-pointed. So striking is this difference that it was
long considered to indicate two quite distinct kinds." While
the ivy is still supported by wall or tree, the leaves are
of the lobed type, but when its support serves it no farther,
the branches shorten and form into large heads bearing
ovate undivided leaves, and at the ends of these branches
the flower clusters. These flowers are arranged in
spherical masses, each flower stem of the group springing
from one common centre. The flowers are small and
of a pale green. They contain ample store of honey in
their nectaries, and, flowering in October and November,
when little else is available, form a great centre of attraction
to multitudes of insects, from the lordly Red Admiral

1 Gerard, for instance, writing some two hundred and seventy years
ago, states, as beyond cavil, ‘there be two kindes of Iuy,” and then,
however, proceeds to add yet another, the plant we all know now-a-days
as the Virginian Creeper. The reference is so interesting that we may
venture to quote it, though the plant can claim no place within the limits
of our title-page. ‘There is kept for nouelties sake in diuers gardens
a Virginian, by some, though vnfitly, termed a Vine, being indeed an Iuy.
The stalkes of this grow to a great heighth, if they be planted nigh anything
that may sustaine or beare them vp: and they take first hold by certaine
small tendrels vpon what body soeuer they grow, whether stone, boords,
bricke, yea glasse, and that so firmely that often times they will bring pieces
with them if you plucke them off. The leaues are large, consisting of
foure, five, or more particular leaues, each of them being long, and deeply

notched about the edges, so that they somewhat resemble those of the
Chesnut tree.”

IVY 45

to the lowliest midge, all flocking to the welcome
banquet.

The wood of the ivy is soft and porous and of no
great value, though the stems sometimes arrive at a very
considerable bulk. | When the plant has long been
in undisturbed possession of some old ruined building
the main stems may often be found a yard in cir-
cumference.

The berries are smooth to the touch, globose in form,
about as large as a pea, and of a dense black that has a
slight suggestion of purple in it. This sombre tint makes
them the more conspicuous when in a heavy Winter most
things, including the ivy foliage itself, are resting beneath
a mantle of snow. These berries are borne in great
profusion, and are a most welcome provision for the birds,
and especially coming as they do when the farmer has
gathered in all his fruit, pears, wheat, and other delectable
items in the menu of his feathered friends and enemies,
and the other wild berries have been consumed. The
black-caps, misse]-thrushes, and wood-pigeons seem specially
partial to them, but many other species may be found
eagerly flocking to the attractive repast. The birds owe,
again, a deep debt of gratitude to the ivy for the valuable
shelter that its dense masses of evergreen foliage afford
them, not only when concealment is sought at nesting-
time, but when its snug recesses shield them amidst the
driving snow and fierce wintry winds. These berries,
though slightly succulent when quite ripe, being somewhat
bitter and acrid, have no attraction to the human biped,
and are strongly emetic in their action if he be so
injudicious as to venture on experimenting with them.

~

46 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

It has long been a problem whether the ivy that we
think, and rightly so, so picturesque when we see it
ascending a tree-trunk, was inflicting injury upon its host
or not, and the general impression was that such a
mantling was hurtful. Tusser, in his quaint old book
on husbandry, says,

Let Iuy be killed,
Else tree will be spilled,

This spilling is merely a sacrifice to the exigencies of
rhyme, and if we read the last word as “spoilt” we shall
probably get to the plain prose of the matter as it
presented itself to the old writer. Elsewhere he writes :

Where luie imbraceth the tree verie sore
Kill Iuie, or else tree will addle no more.

If for “addle” we substitute “add on” we get the meaning,
that the tree too tightly swathed in the grip of the ivy is
unable to grow healthily, and cannot increase its bulk. The
old idea was that the ivy was a parasite, stealing nourishment
by its rootlets from the tree that it embraced,’ but there
seems to be really no more reason to suppose that these
so-called rootlets on the stems rob the tree of its vitality,
than that sweet-peas or other tendril-bearing flowers rob
of their life-juices any plants to which they may be found
clinging. In each case the mischief which may arise, and
which sometimes does arise, is mechanical, the mischief
that arises from over-pressure, from the denial of air,

1 Ivy hath a thick wooddy Trunk or Body sometimes as big as one’s
arm, usually climbing up Trees, and by the small Roots it sendeth into
them, draweth nourishment from them, many times to their bane and utter
ruin,— Adam in Eden, 1657.

IVY 47

light, sunshine, a fair share of rain, and such-like
influences that make for a plant’s well-being. The
mistletoe is a good illustration of a parasitic plant, feeding
as it does on the apple or other tree that bears it, but the
ivy honestly draws its nourishment from mother Earth.
The so-called roots, for which crampons is a better name,
are the multitudinous little hands that grasp and take
possession. If the ivy be found on the ground it does
not develop these crampons, because it has no work for
them to do.

This belief in the parasitic nature of the ivy, and the
morals that could be deduced from it, were a most valuable
asset in the storehouse of the earlier poets. We recall
how Shakespeare, greatest of all, puts into the mouth of
Adriana, in the Comedy of Errors, the words—

If aught possess thee from me, it is dross,
Usurping ivy, brier, or idle moss,

Who all, for want of pruning, with intrusion,
Infect thy sap, and live on thy confusion.

It will be recalled, too, how Prospero, in the Tempest,
describing the wickedness of Sebastian, pictures his ingrati-
tude to his benefactor in the bitter words—

He was
The ivy which had hid my princely trunk
And suck’d my verdure out on’t.

Ivy possesses great vitality, and we hear from time to
time of cases where ivy stems have been sawn through
and yet the plant appears to be none the worse for such
drastic treatment ; and it has been suggested that, though
the crampons are ordinarily but means of fixing the ivy

48 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

to the wall, they may in these untoward circumstances act
as true roots, drawing sufficient moisture from the wall,
a mossy old tree-trunk and from the air, orchid fashion,
to enable the plant to live. However this may be, the
cutting off of direct access to the ground does affect the
vitality, and ultimately destroys the life of the plant. The
delay in the process may be more or less, but symptoms
of decay presently appear and the ivy ultimately dies. No
one can have wandered much in woodland or copse without
encountering trees clothed in a brown wrapping of dead ivy
leaves, the result of the woodman’s billhook having severed
these ivy stems near the ground.

Ivy is often held to be obviously injurious to some fine
old tree that, ivy-clad, is showing at last symptoms of decay.
In the course of many years the ivy has attained to great
luxuriance of growth, and has enclosed the trunk and
taken possession of the larger branches ; but there is in
this no proof that the monarch of the forest, at last yielding
to the inevitable law of Nature, has had its end hastened
by its uninvited guest. When mischief arises is where
young trees, having yet much growth to make, suffer
from the constriction of the encircling stems.

Bacchus is ordinarily ivy-crowned ; while he was yet
an infant he was concealed from the wrath of Juno beneath
sprays of ivy, and the plant was dedicated to him in con-
sequence. It grows very freely in Greece and Asia Minor,
and is abundant at Nyssa, the early home of Bacchus. At
the ancient Greek marriage rite the priest presented the
young couple in the temple with an ivy branch, a symbol
of the binding tie upon which they had entered. A crown
of ivy was bestowed also on Apollo, and on the poets, his

IVY 49

servants. Horace, Virgil, and other ancient writers refer to
this, and are themselves thus reported as crowned.

“‘ A rare old plant is the ivy green,” but our modern
poets do not ordinarily receive it with favour, Carrington,
for example, in his Dartmoor, associates it entirely with
decay and fallen greatness, clothing the old ruins with
its “‘spirit-chilling green,” and hails it as a ‘‘cheerless
plant, sacred to desolation,” while Cowper tells how it—

Clings to word and stone,
And hides the ruin that it feeds upon.

With Barton it is an emblem of persistence in the
midst of evanescence.
It changes not as seasons flow,
In changeless, silent course along;

Spring finds it verdant, leaves it so,
It outlives Summer's song.

Autumn, no wan nor russet stain
Upon its deathless glory flings;
And Winter’o’er it sweeps in vain
With tempest on his wings.

Charles de Guise, Cardinal of Lorraine, chose as his
device a pyramid, the most indestructible of all buildings,
and, clothing it with ivy, placed beneath it the motto
Te stante virebo, “ While you stand I shall flourish.”

The ivy is intimately associated with the festivities of
Christmas, the ease with which it can be garlanded and
festooned making it very welcome in the adornment of
the home. The black berries of the ivy contrast admirably
with the scarlet fruit of the holly and the pale wan berries
of the mistletoe. Withers, in his Yuvenilla, pictures how
at “our joyful’st feast” all hearts are aglow, how “ Eache

4

50 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

roome with yvie leaves is drest, and every post with holly,”
how at such a time—

Without the door let sorrow lie,

And if for cold, it hap to die,

We'll bury it in a Christmas pye
And evermore be merry.

For centuries it was the custom to hang an ivy bough
over the tavern door, as a sign of the business carried on
within. Hence our old proverb, “ good wine needs no
bush,” and the French rendering, ‘‘ -4u vin qui se vend bien,
il ne faut point de lierre”’; but indeed this custom and
the proverbs based on it go back beyond the Christian era.

BLACK BRYONY (Tamus Communis)

The subject of our next illustration, Plate VIII., is the
black bryony, the Tamus communis. That there should be a
black bryony seems to suggest that there must be some
other bryony as well, and this is promptly encountered in
the equally common red-berried bryony or Bryontca dioica.
These two plants, though somewhat similar in name, have
no botanical relationship; they are not, for instance, like
two kinds of roses, or two species of buttercup.

The black bryony throws its long twining and trailing
stems for many feet amongst the hedgerow plants, asserting
itself with great vigour. ‘ There bee some Plants,” Bacon
declares, “ that shoot still upwards, and can support them-
selves; As the greatest Part of Trees and Plants; There
be some Other, that Creeps along the Ground ; Or Winde
about other Trees, or Props, and cannot support them-
selves; as Vines, Ivy, Briar, Bryony, Woodbines, Hops,

BLACK BRYONY

BLACK BRYONY 5t

Climatis, Camomill, etc. The cause is, for that all Plants
(naturally) moue vpwards: But if the Sap put vp too
fast, it maketh a slender Stalke, which will not support
the weight; And therefore these latter Sort are all Swift
and Hasty Commers.” So declareth Bacon in his Sy/va
Sylvarum, though how the Chamomile, a low-growing
plant, yet sturdy withal, as befits a plant that has to
fight for its life on open common land, ever got amongst
the climbing plants it is impossible to divine. The sage
Bacon was at this point a little less erudite than usual.
The leaves of the black byrony are large, of a very
pronounced heart-shape, very polished and shining in
surface, dark green in colour, very prominently veined,
very numerous on the stems. In the Autumn, when the
foliage is fading, it changes from sombre green to a great
variety of yellow and brown tints, and becomes a very
noticeable feature in the hedgerows, its long festoons being
much in evidence. Beautiful in its dark glossy green
garb in the Summer, it 1s still more attractive in its brilliant
Autumn attire, and when we add to this the long line of
fruit-clusters, themselves greatly varied in colour, the total
result is very charming. The large tuberous roots are
possessed of an acrid pulp that suggested their use to our
forefathers as a stimulating plaster, and the young stems
may be eaten like asparagus. The flowers are small and
greenish in colour, the stamen-bearing fiowers being on one
plant and the pistillate flowers on another, hence it is not
every black bryony we see that is berry-bearing. These
berries, though attractive to the eye from their varied colours,
a state of things arising from their more or less approach
to maturity, do not strike one as very tempting. This

52 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

unwholesome appearance in quite justified by experience, as
they are raw and acrid and entirely undesirable as an item
in one’s dietary.

RED-BERRIED BRYONY (Brvonia Dioica)

As both species of bryony bear red berries, to call one
of them by way of distinction the red-berried bryony does
not strike one as being a particularly happy idea, and so
we occasionally, though much more seldom, find it called
white bryony in strong contradiction to black bryony. In
each plant the roots are very large, and in the case of one
of them white and in the other black. The white bryony
throws up a large number of slender, herbaceous stems,
slightly rough to the touch, and climbing vigorously.
The leaves are large, and five-lobed, rough in texture, and
each having, at the base of the stem on which it is
borne, a long spiral tendril. The flowers are dicecious,
the males being on one plant, and the females on another,
small and of whitish-green colour. The fruit is a globose,
many-seeded berry about as large as a pea, green at first,
but ultimately passing through yellow to crimson. The
plant is called the Bryony from the Greek dryo, to grow
up, in allusion to the vigorous growth of the annual shoots.
By some old writers it is called White Vine. It is a
charming plant to trail over any fencing in an odd corner
of one’s garden. We have had it, and enjoyed it in our
own garden for years, as it comes up each Spring as a
matter of course, needs no attention, and only asks to be
let alone.

The odour of the berries on crushing them is somewhat

BLACKTHORN 53

nauseous and the taste insipid. The plant abounds with
an acrid juice. The root’ of the bryony has a disagreeable
odour, and a nauseous taste, and, though it has been a good
deal used in medicine, has very poisonous qualities. It has
been employed in asthma, hysteria, epilepsy, lumbago, and
other ills of suffering humanity, but several cases are on
record in the text-books and medical transactions where
death has supervened from improper administration.
Tincture of bryonia still holds a place in modern medicine,
being used advantageously in pleurisy and inflammation
of the lungs. The earlier physicians made great use of
the plant. “The iuyce of the root,” says one venerable
authority, “ being pressed out in the Spring and drunke with
mead or honied water draweth forth choler.” ‘‘ Dropsie,
falling sicknesse, swimming of the braine, black and blew
spots which come of stripes, leprie”’ were all attacked by
the administration of bryony.

BLACKTHORN (Prunus Communis)

The Blackthorn, Prunus communis, depicted in its
fruiting stage in Plate IX. is in the early Springtime a very
conspicuous feature in the hedgerows and copses, as it is
then thickly covered over with a wealth of pure snow-white
blossoms. The flowering period varies naturally in varying
localities and conditions of growth, but may be taken as
about the beginning of March to the middle of April.

' The roote is very greate, long and thicke, growing deepe in the earth,
of a whitish yellow colour, extreame bitter, and altogether of an unpleasant
taste. The Queenes chiefe Surgion Mr. William Godorons, a very curious

and learned gentleman shewed me a root hereof, that waied halfe an hundred
weight, and of the bignesse of a childe of a yeere old, GERARD.

54 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

The blackthorn is so called to distinguish it from the
whitethorn, or hawthorn, the subject of our first illustration.
It is also known as the sloe. A reference to our two
illustrations will show that there is no need of any special
hints as to distinguishing the two plants in Autumn, and
one quite sufficient point of distinction between them in
the Spring is that, while they are- both a mass of white
blossom, in the blackthorn the flowers come out while there
are few or no leaves, while in the hawthorn the foliage is
well out before the flowers appear. Burns, in the touching
lament of Mary Queen of Scots, dwells very happily on
the approach of Spring—

Now blooms the lily by the bank,
The primrose down the brae ;

The hawthorn’s budding in the glen,
And milk-white is the slae.

The distinction in time between the two plants is very
truthfully given. While the hawthorn is but beginning to
unfold its leaves in the most sheltered positions, the black-
thorn is already one sheet of blossom, so that in thinking of
the tree the one mental picture that arises to the poet’s mind
is the profusion of its flowers, no visible leaves, no visible
stems, but just one sheet of blossom—‘ milk-white is the
slae.” While the flowers of the hawthorn are strongly
fragrant, those of the blackthorn are quite inodorous.

The blackthorn, if left alone, will grow into a small tree,
attaining a height of some twelve feet or so. It is an
excellent hedge material, as it throws out a great mass of
angular branches, well armed with spines, that interlace and
form an impenetrable barrier.

The dried leaves are sometimes gathered by the cottagers

BLAC

BLACKTHORN 55

as a substitute for tea. Some little while ago large quan-
tities were gathered and dried as a commercial speculation,
over four million pounds of them being sold in one year ;
but it was found that they were being so largely used to
sophisticate tea that the Excise authorities took alarm,
and the manufacture came to an abrupt end.

The wood of the blackthorn is very hard and tough ; it
is occasionally made into walking-sticks, and in some circles
of society a good blackthorn shillelah is considered fully
equal, for strengthening an argument, to a crab-tree cudgel.
The bark is astringent, and has been found advantageous as
a febrifuge.

The fruit, as our illustration shows, is globular or slightly
ovoid, in colour purple almost to blackness, but, when ripe,
covered with a beautiful violet-coloured bloom. Inviting
though it be to the eye, it is found on tasting to be
so harsh that one has no inclination to repeat the experience,
though after a touch of mellowing frost it loses some-
what of this biting acridity. They are at this season
gathered by the country folk: they either preserve them
or make them into a beverage that is held in consider-
able favour in rustic society. The juice expressed from
them makes a good marking-ink for linen or woollen,
and if a little sulphate of iron be added to it, it has
complete permanence.’

In excavating the baths at the Roman city of Silchester
a great many fruit stones were found in a drain; amongst

1 The iuice of sloes doth stop the lask and flix, and all other issues of blood,
and may very well in vsed in stead of Acatia, which is a thornie tree growing
in A°gypt, very hard to be gotten, and of a deere price, albeit our plums of
this countrie are equal vnto it in vertues." GERARD.

56 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

these were those of the cherry, damson, and blackthorn.
These fruits were evidently taken to assist in whiling away
the time at the baths, the great meeting-place of the citizens
and their wives and daughters, and one can only feel that
if our Roman predecessors could lunch off blackthorn
berries, it is one testimonial the more to their indomitable
pluck and perseverance.

Not only do our hedges and woodlands yield us wild
plums, but apples, pears, and cherries no less. To describe
these at any length would appear unnecessary, as those
who know these fruits in their cultivated forms will find
no difficulty in recognising their wild prototypes.

SPINDLE-TREE (Evonymus Evropus)

Though the Spindle tree during Spring and Summer
is an entirely inconspicuous shrub, it developes in the

Autumn into one of the most beautiful, its fruit in form ~

and colour being highly attractive, and its foliage of great
richness of tint. Growing as Nature would have it to grow,
it attains to a height of over twenty feet, but more
ordinarily in copse and hedge it is little more than a
bush. The greenish-white, four-petalled flowers expand in
May. The lance-shaped leaves grow in pairs. They have
their margins minutely notched, and are throughout the
Summer of a somewhat dull green, but in the Autumn
they change to a brilliant bronze-red or purple. We have
depicted the plant in its Autumn bravery in our illustration,
Plate X.

The wood of the larger branches is hard and of fine
grain. It was originally much in demand for making

SPINDLE-TREE 57

spindles, hence the popular English name of the tree. It
is in like manner in Germany the Spindelbaum, and its
name in most of the other European languages 1s based
on the same reference to the use of the tree.

In September the curious pendant four-celled seed-vessels
are ripened. They are produced in great abundance, and
remain on the trees, if unmolested, long after the tree has
lost all its leaves. They are ordinarily of a bright rosy
pink, and of a waxen texture, but occasionally we may
find them pure white. They are of very quaint and
beautiful form, and when fully ripe open out and show
within their cup the brilliant orange-coloured seeds. One
of the French names of the plant is the Bonnet de prétre,
in obvious allusion to the similarity in form of the fruit
to the biretta, the head-dress worn by the priests of the
Romish Church and their imitators within the Anglican
fold.

The generic name of the plant is derived from Euonyme,
the mother of the Furies, in allusion to the possibilities of
evil stored up within its gay exterior. The seeds, though
violently poisonous to mankind, are eaten by thrushes,
blackbirds, and other birds, and an oil is expressed from
them on the Continent that has its use in manufactures.
One finds the spindle tree occasionally transferred to the
garden and shrubbery: it is a very easy tree to rear, and
one wonders, in view of its great attractiveness, that it is
not more often found amongst other shrubs in cultivation.

Though the specific name Europeus would seem to
specially identify the plant with this quarter of the world,
it is found not only throughout Europe, but also in Western
Asia and North Africa.

58 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

WAYFARING-TREE (Visurnum Lantana)

We may occasionally find in our hedgerows and copse-
lands the wayfaring-tree, a large and freely branching shrub
or small tree. A very characteristic feature by which it can
be readily identified is its particularly grey appearance as
contrasted with its neighbours round about it. This effect
arises from the soft meal-like down that clothes alike the
upper stems and the foliage. It is a plant that prospers
especially well in chalk and limestone districts, and it is
there found abundantly.

The leaves are about four inches long and grow in
pairs. They are very roundly ovate in form, and have
on their margins a line of small teeth. The upper surface
of the leaf is somewhat soft and velvety to the touch,
while on the lower this downy covering is yet thicker,
and in consequence yet greyer in effect. The strongly
reticulated veining is a very prominent feature, especially
on the lower surface. In the Autumn these greyish-green
leaves change their Quaker-like garb for one of rich
crimson red.

The flowers are small, and white in colour, the five
large anthers being very conspicuous in their midst, and
they grow in dense clusters of about three inches in
diameter. Unlike those of the Guelder Rose, a very near
relation, each flower of the wayfaring-tree is perfect, the
noble outer ring of barren blossoms that we see in the
guelder rose being absent.

The berries are at first green, and then turn a good
strong red in colour, and finally become purplish-black,
and they may often be found at the same time, and on

WA YVFARING-TREE 59

the same tree, in these varying tints. Each contains one
seed.

The bark is so acrid as to raise a blister, and thus
indicates its service in rustic medical treatment. In the
“Foure Bookes of Husbandry collected by Conradus
Herebachius, ‘newely Englished and increased by Barnabe
Googe, Esquire,” we read that ‘“‘Nature hath appoynted
remedyes in a redynesse for al diseases, but the craft
and subteltie of man for gaine hath devised Apothecaries
Shoppes, in which a man’s Lyfe is to be solde and bought,
where they fetche their medicines from Hierusalem, and
out of Turkie, whyle in ye mean time every poore man
hath the ryght remedyes growing in his Garden: for yf
men would make theyr Gardens theyr Physitions the
Physicions craft would soone decay.”

The bark furnishes a very efficient bird-lime to the village
bird-catcher, who pursues his craft.more or less, we fear,
in defiance, or possibly in ignorance, of the various Small
Birds Protection Acts, close times, and the like ; secure in
the local sympathy for his work, deriving its strength
from the feeling that too often regards every bird as the
farmer’s natural enemy, to be trapped, shot, or poisoned
without mercy.

One old writer, puzzled to account for the name of
the plant, breaks into ponderous humour, and declares
that as this tree is so often found in the roadside hedge,
it is ever on the way, and is therefore a wayfarer. But
a more reasonable explanation would appear to be that
its grey foliage, looking as though covered with roadside
dust, suggests the wayfarer toiling travel-stained along the
highway. It is sometimes by the older herbalists called

60 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

mealy-bush, a name sufficiently descriptive ; or sometimes
the whitten-tree. If we, still bearing in mind this grey
covering, translate this into whitened-tree, we shall not
be going far wrong, we imagine. A yet older name for
it is the lithy-tree, lithy being a word derived from the
Anglo-Saxon word for pliant. “The branches thereof,”
declares Parkinson, in his Theatrum Botanicum,' “are so
tough and strong withall, that they serve better for bands
to tye bundels or any other thing withall, or to make
wreathes to hold together the gates of fields, than either
withy or any other the like.”

YEW (Taxus Baccata)

Though not at all a popular or desirable addition
to the plants of the hedgerow,’ we may occasionally en-
counter the yew; why unpopular, why undesirable, we
shall presently see. To most of us, however, the mental
picture we conjure up at the thought of the yew is not a
lowly hedge-plant, but a venerable and far-reaching tree,
densely branched, not of any great height, maybe, but of an
aspect suggestive of great antiquity. Yew-trees when young
are often rather acutely pyramidal, but as they grow older
they expand, until presently we find them round, or almost

1 “Collected by the many yeares travaile, industry and experience in this
subject by John Parkinson, apothecary of London and the King’s Herbarist.
Published by the King’s Majestyes especiall priviledge ” 1640.

2 In the formal gardens of our ancestors the yew is very frequently
seen, as it bears cutting well, and is an evergreen. At Wrest, in Bedfordshire,
one may see a hedge of it twenty feet high, and near Calne is one that is
ten feet thick and sixty yards long. It is needless, however, to particularise,
as every county in England, we suppose, will furnish its fine old ancestral

hall or stately home standing in the midst of its parterres environed by
these living walls.

YEW 61

flat, headed. They are rarely more than about thirty feet
high, though that at Harlington, the tallest by far in
England, attains to an altitude of fifty-eight feet. In a
typical yew-tree the numerous branches spread boldly out
in more or less radiate fashion, the lower ones being nearly
or quite horizontal, or even pendulous.

The yew is indigenous to these isles, a genuine ancient
Briton, growing in wild, rocky, and mountainous districts
in the north and west, and on the great downlands of the
south. It prefers stiff calcareous soil, but thrives under
other conditions ; battling for centuries against the roaring
gales, caring nothing for heat or cold; generation after
generation of men passing away, and each gazing on it in
its imperturbable fixedness and endurance. The tree is no
less at home throughout Europe, flourishing on the slopes
of the Vosges, the Jura range, the Pyrenees, the Alps, and
the Apennines, equally at home, too, in the Caucasus and on
the Himalaya, in Japan and the Philippines, and on the
mountains of Canada and the United States.

The trunk of an old yew-tree becomes wonderfully split
and contorted, while its bark, dark brown in colour, is
rough and cracked, peeling away very easily, the upper
layer being cast off and renewed each year. The wood is
very hard and compact in grain and beautifully mottled in
shades of reddish-orange and dark brown. Virgil repeatedly
calls it the tough and stubborn yew, and commends it for
weapons, while many a long year before his day its tenacity
commended it to the Assyrians, and amongst the long-buried
remains of great Nineveh are unearthed in this our day
objects made from its wood. It has been used a good
deal for wood-inlay, spoons, cups, axle-trees, cogs for mill-

62 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

wheels, and the like, and as an alternative to boxwood for
the service of the wood engraver. Its power of resisting
decay makes it also very valuable for piles, pumps, and
fencing. Gilpin, in his book on trees, declares it to be
a common saying amongst the woodmen of the New Forest
that a post of yew will outlast a post of iron.

The leaves of the yew are linear, small, of a sombre
green, numerous, glossy, evergreen, arranged in two opposite
ranks or series on the stems.

The distinguish’d yew is ever seen,
Unchanged his branch, and permanent his green.—PRIOR.

The sombre character of the foliage becomes very
marked when contrasted with the surrounding foliage of
other trees, or when a large mass or grove of yew-trees is
a feature in the landscape. Scott writes of a “dismal

’

grove of sable yew,” the trees appearing almost black by
contrast with their environment ; and Hood, in his Ode
to Autumn, seizes on the same feature and writes of
“Mournful cypress and dark yew.” The same trees of
ill-omen reappear in the lines of Harte, where, in describing
some scene of mountain desolation, he tells how —
Dark cypresses the skirting sides adorned,
And gloomy yew-trees which for ever mourned.
Yew as a hedge material has many advantages, it makes
a dense screen, is evergreen, bears clipping excellently well,
and is, practically, everlasting ; but all these good qualities
are vitiated by one fatal defect—its poisonous nature. Our
ancestors used the leaves as .a vermifuge, but found that
they not only killed the patient’s unwelcome guests, but
the patient as well, and this was held by the patient to so

VEW 63

far militate against their use that the remedy went out of
fashion. Horses, cows, or deer, either picking up yew
clippings, or nibbling at the green leaves when the grass
is thin, all quickly die, while, curiously enough, goats,
hares, and rabbits have a complete immunity. To horses
it would appear to be most fatal of all; but a Professor
Wiborg, of Copenhagen, found that by mixing yew-leaves
with other food, and giving the compound in careful
proportion, one could gradually increase the proportion of
yew without danger. The great risk both with horses and
cattle would appear to be that, under sudden temptation,
when food is short, owing to severe weather or other cause,
too much is taken at one time. While such experiments
as those of Dr. Wiborg are very interesting, and we have
often felt desirous to make them, the practical difficulty
was that we never quite cared to investigate the action
of poisons or the like on our own horse or cow, and
there was a certain delicacy in asking one’s neighbour for
the loan of his! It will be observed that, while many
hedgerow trees, like the hawthorn, have their foliage in
some seasons almost destroyed by caterpillars or other small
depredators, nothing attacks the yew-leaves.

' While we should naturally imagine that if a thing be poisonous at
all it will be poisonous all round, a little investigation soon shows that this
is by no means the case, the same plant being deadly poison to one creature,
innocuous and acceptable to another. That which proves—

Strong poison unto me, another loves,

And eats, and lives, Thus hemlock juice prevails,

And kills a man, but fattens goats and quails.

CREECH, Lucretius.

Sheep will eat hemlock with impunity, but if a cat nibbles it, it dies, and
if you, gentle reader, with a turn for investigation, show your pet parrot
that parsley is delectable, and to be eaten with full impunity, and it follows
your example, your bird’s faith in you costs it its life.

64 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

So deadly has the yew been reputed to be that to sleep
beneath its shade was held a form of suicide.’ This
belief has flourished for some two thousand years at least,
being in full vigour long before the Christian era. Gerard,
however, writing his General Historie of Plants in 1633,
declares, bringing the matter to the test of experiment :
“JT have not only slept under the shadow thereof, but
amongst the branches also, without any hurt at all, and
that not one time but many times.’”’ Shakespeare, in King
Richard II., applies the epithet “doubly fatal” to the
yew, referring not alone to its poisonous nature, but to
the deadly skill in archery of those who—

bend their bows
Of double-fatal yew against thy State.

Pliny, in his Historia Mundi, written in the first century
of the Christian era, declares, in the quaint translation of
him by Holland in the reign of Queen Elizabeth—‘ The
yugh fearefull to looke upon, a cursed tree” ; and it will be
remembered that when the Witches in Macbeth were
making their gruesome mixture of eye of newt and toe
of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog, adder’s fork and
blindworm’s sting, and such-like untempting ingredients,
they did not forget to throw into the horrible mess some
slips of yew. The yew was always regarded as something
decidedly uncanny.

The flowers of the yew will be found in March; they

1 The Yew is hot and dry, having such attraction that if planted near a
place subject to poysonous vapours its very branches will draw and imbibe
them. Wheresoever it grows it is both dangerous and deadly to man and

beast; the very lying under its branches has been found hurtful.—TuRNER,
Botanologia 1664.

YEW 65

are dioecious, the pistillate and staminate flowers not being
found upon the same shrub or tree. They grow from the
bases of the leaves, and must be searched for on the under
surfaces of the stems, and it will be realised that only the
trees bearing the pistillate type of flower will be berry-
bearing. This physiological fact was not comprehended
for centuries after men began to study plants, so that we
find Gerard, for instance, making two distinct species of yew,
the “ Taxus glandifera bacciferaque, the Yew bearing Acornes
and berries,” and the “ Zaxus tantum florens, the Yew
which only floures.” Of the first he says: “It seemes this
tree, if it were not hindred by cold weather, would alwaies
have Acornes and Berries on him, for he hath alwaies little
buds, which so soone as the Spring yeelds but a reasonable
heate, they growe into the forme of Acornes : about the
beginning of August, seldome before, you shall finde them
turned into ripe berries, and from that time till Christmasse,
or a little after, you may see on him both Acornes and red
berries.” Of the second he writes: “The Yew, which only
beareth floures and no berries, is like the other in trunke,
timber, barke, and leaves, but at the beginning of Nouember,
or before, this tree doth beginne to be very thicke set or
fraught on the lower side or part of the twigs with small
round buds, verie neere and as big, and of the colour of
Radish seede, and do so continue all the Winter, till about
the middle of Februarie, when they open at the top, sending
forth one small sharpe pointall, garnished towards the top
with many little dusty things like floures; and if you
shall beate or throw stones into this tree about the end
of Februarie, or a good space after, there will proceed
and fly from these floures an aboundance of dustie

5

66 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

smoke.’ These little ‘dusty things” we recognise
as the anthers, and the “dustie smoke” the dispersed
pollen. This abundance of “dustie smoke” we may
see equally strikingly on shaking a festoon of stamen-
bearing hop.

The fruit of the yew is a hard nut-like seed partly
imbedded in a pulpy and berry-like cup. This is the state
of things we have figured in our drawing of the yew on
Plate XI. This outer cup is scarlet in colour, of a curiously
waxy texture, mucilaginous or glutinous when compressed,
and rather mawkishly sweet to the taste. The fruit will
be found from about September onward. It may be eaten
in moderation without danger : missel-thrushes, blackbirds,
and others eagerly indulge in the feast, and wasps also
are very partial to it; but with human beings it is only the
mucilaginous envelope that may be eaten, the central nut
being injurious, and in any considerable quantity deadly.
Gerard’s use of the word acorn, it will be readily perceived,
was suggested by the appearance of the central nut rising
in the midst of its encircling cup. Wordsworth speaks
of the yew as “decked with unrejoicing berries.” What
particular form of rejoicing he missed in them one hardly
sees, but one does see that disparagement is suggested,
so that this great Nature poet notwithstanding, it seems
about time to assert very definitely that the yew is not a
baleful, dismal, gloomy, cheerless, unsocial, sullen, melan-
choly, pensive, and funereal tree, though all these epithets
and many more such have been bestowed upon it, but a
welcome and sturdy guest, self-reliant, needing no petting,
asking of us no attention, and rewarding us at all times
with its living verdure, attractive at all times, and especially

YEW 67

so when its branches bear their coral-like berries, beautiful
in form, beautiful in colour, and contrasting charmingly
with the dark green foliage.

Like holly, ivy, laurustinus, and other evergreen plants,
the yew is in demand at the glad Christmas season, both
for the decoration of the church and of the home,! and in
pre-Reformation days it was in these northern latitudes
used on Palm Sunday as a substitute for the real palm in
processions. The willow was also used, and so both that
and the yew became called palms, a name that the former
still retains in many parts of the country when the
particular species most employed, the sallow, is bearing its
catkins. The yew, unfortunately, loses one great attraction,
seeing that its berries part company from the stem at but
slight provocation. In some parts of England they hold
that yew must have no place in dressing the home, or there
will be a death in the family before the end of the year.
Such a gruesome belief, happily, could not have been very
generally held, or we should not find Herrick singing—

When yew is out then birch comes in,
And many flowers beside,

Both of a fresh and fragrant kin
To honour Whitsuntide.

Our ancestors had a pleasant custom of decking their
houses all through the Winter and Spring, and had a regular
sequence, the holly being succeeded by the box, the box

! This verdant adornment was in its origin long pre-Christian, the Romans
decorating their houses with green boughs during the Saturnalia, If, however,
we object to the idea of this Pagan precedent, we can find another in the
Jewish use of such signs of rejoicing in their Feast of Tabernacles. It must
in all ages have been a most natural form of rejoicing.

68 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

by the yew, and that in turn, as we see, by the birch,
succeeding verses, that we need not quote, carrying on the
floral order.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the yew was
held in high esteem in the stately gardens of that period,
not merely as a fence and a protection from the wind, but
for the ease with which it could be clipped into all sorts
of fantastic shapes, as peacocks, dragons, pyramids. Pliny
refers to this as a custom in his day also. Lord Bacon,
with his wonted good sense, protested against this practice,
and says in one of his essays: “I, for my part, do not
like images cut out in juniper and other garden stuff:
they be for children.” But his strictures had no influence,
and in the reign of William and Mary the taste for this
sort of thing was all-pervading. Yet later on the ridicule
of Addison and Pope was brought to bear on the practice,
and it presently passed out of fashion. As in most other
things, there is between the extremes a golden mean, a
happy medium, and it cannot be denied that a certain
formal clipping and stately rigidity of line harmonised well
with these fine old Tudor mansions, with their geometric
flower-beds, statuary, fountains, terraces, and noble flights
of steps.

In the language of the botanist the yew is the Taxus
baccata. ‘The second of these names has obvious reference
to berry-bearing, but the first is by no means so clear.
The common name, yew, is a corruption—or shall we rather
say a suggestion—from the Celtic iw, green, The variation
in the spelling of the word is very great; we have seen
it given as yweu, eow, iw, ewe, eugh, whe, eu, ew, ewgh,
yugh, yeugh, yewe, yowe, and even iuu, and this by no

YEW 69

means exhausts the list. In fact, if our readers will fix
upon the most outrageous orthography they can imagine,
doubtless time and due research would make its discovery
possible in some old volume.

When the yew furnished the long bow, the weapon
so formidable in the skilled hands of our English archers,
the weapon that gained for England the proud victories
of Crecy, and Poictiers, and Agincourt, its growth and
preservation were of essential national importance, so that
statute after statute was passed in succeeding reigns to
keep unimpaired the supply. Even after the introduction
of gunpowder, villainous saltpetre, the long bow long held
its ground, and so late as Flodden Field was a potent
aid to victory. The home supply was by no means
sufficient, and while the exportation of yew was strictly
forbidden, its importation was encouraged in every way,
and at length it was made obligatory that merchants
trading abroad should bring back not only the wine, or
silk, or furs, or whatever cargo formed their lading, but
with these a certain amount of suitable yew wood for the
making of bows. Roger Ascham, in his quaint Toxophilus,
declares that “As for elme, wych, and ashe, experience
dothe prove them to be but meane for bowes; ewe of
all things is that whereof perfite shootinge would have a
bowe made.”

All Englishmen who were physically fit were, for

1So far as eughen bow a shaft may send.
SPENCER.

Fyn ew, popler and lindes faire.
CHAUCER,
The warlike yewgh, by which, more than the lance,

The strong-armed English spirits conquered France,
Sir THomMas BROWNE.

70 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

generations, required to exercise the art of shooting, and it
was on public holidays the great recreation. The warlike
Edward III. would, in fact, recognise no other, and by royal
proclamation all were instructed to “learn and exercise
the art of shooting, forbidding all and singular that they
do not after any manner apply themselves to the throwing
of stones, hand ball,” etc., a long list being given of “ such-
like vain plays which have no profit in them.” Those
who failed to obey the king’s command had no alternative
but imprisonment during the king’s pleasure. Every man
was required to have a bow, and with this he wended his
way with his neighbours to the butts that were built in
the outskirts of every town. King after king issued such
commands as were needful to maintain the English skill
in archery, and to fit all able-bodied men to take their
place in the national defence. Would that we, a great
Imperial race, of vast responsibilities, could nowadays.
emulate the zeal and patriotism of our forefathers, and,
thinking less of “sport” and vain plays without profit,
become a nation in which every man was familiar with the
handling of a rifle and proficient in its use. With all
respect to King Edward III., we think that monarch did
not perhaps sufficiently realise that Waterloo was won on
the playing-fields of Eton—if, indeed, he ever heard that
well-worn remark. The victory, however, was to the
players, and not to the lookers-on. There is considerable
moral and physical difference between struggling for one’s
side on the football field, and being in these latter days
one of forty thousand mill hands, or colliers, who surround
the enclosure, roaring their approbation or yelling their
disgust at the play in which they take no part.

YEW 71

Many noble yew-trees are in existence, and of these
a great number will be found in our old country church-
yards. Why this should be so is an unsolved problem.
Some would persuade us that they were planted there to
assist in the production of all those long bows that England
once needed ; some that their sombre shade might solemnise
the thoughts and remind all of the days of mourning and
the silent resting-place; some that their far-spreading
branches might make a welcome defence against fierce sun,
or driving hail, or what else might mar the funeral rites ;
while others tell us that as they stand unmoved, genera-
tion after generation of humanity laid beneath their shade,
they, clad in unchanging verdure, are to each and all the
emblem of immortality. Some would have it that the
yew-tree was sacred to the Druids and their disciples,
though of this there is no definite evidence, and that the
founders of Christian churches, raising their buildings on
the sites of the temples of the older faith, yet left the old
trees standing. Judging by modern feeling, it would seem
most improbable that the new shrines should be reared on
ground soaked with the blood of the victims of such awful
cruelty as the Druidic rites are known to have fostered ;
but perhaps other men other manners, and such deliberate
occupation of the old sites might be held to more distinctly
show to all the victory of the Cross.

It may at once be replied that if the trees had a
religious significance to the disciples of Druidism, their
destruction by the adherents to Christianity would be
inevitable ; but this is not necessarily so. Even in things
evil there may be something of good, and if we assume—
and the assumption has been made, though apparently on

72 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

no just foundation—that to the Druids the yew-trees were
a symbol of immortality, there would be little or no reason
to destroy them. The teachers of the new beliefs would
naturally find it well to avoid drastic and unnecessary changes
in matters not essentials, which could be retained without
sacrifice of principle, and they might not unreasonably
decide that where the old teaching could be engrafted into
the new, its symbols need suffer no molestation. All this,
however, is the merest theory, the vaguest surmise. In some
churchyards one finds more than one yew-tree, though
for any symbolic purpose one would appear sufficient.
In Cudham churchyard, for instance, there are two noble
old trees, at Hemelsfield three, at Aberystwith eleven.
While many of these venerable trees are clearly of immense
age, and known, from reference in Domesday Book and
other ancient records, to date long prior to the Norman
Conquest, one must not too hastily assume Druidic origin
all round. In several churchyards are to be seen noble-
looking trees of which the actual date of planting is known.
The yew really grows somewhat rapidly in its earlier days,
these earlier days being an odd century or two.

The poets seem to have entered into a conspiracy
to vilify the yew, not apparently having seen it growing
wild and free on some mountain slope, but only as a
churchyard tree. That the tree should be found amidst
the tombs is clearly not the fault of the yew at all, yet

1 In Lowe’s altogether excellent monograph on the Yew-trees of Great
Britain and Ireland is a very striking illustration of this, a tree that was
planted in the churchyard of Boughton, near Faversham, on the authority
of the parish Register, in the year 1695, having now a girth of trunk at three
feet from the ground of nearly ten feet, or, to be absolutely accurate, nine
feet and nine inches, in 1897.

YEW 73

because some man planted it there, another man denounces
it for being found amidst such surroundings! With
Fletcher it is the “dismal yew,” while Blair roundly
denounces it as the—

Cheerless, unsocial plant, that cares to dwell
*Midst skulls and coffins, epitaphs, and worms ;

Moir points out how—

Yon dark, sepulchral yew-trees stand
O’er many a level grave;

and Stanley, writing in 1551, wishes strewn upon _his
‘dismall grave’’ such offerings as “ forsaken cypresse and
sad yewe.” Dryden, in like manner, calls it the “ mourner
yew,” and it would be easy enough to quote much more
in the same lugubrious strain,

The good folk of Sunbury-on-Thames are doubly proud
of the fine old yew which stands in their churchyard ; for
its own sake, and for its association with Charles Dickens.
It is mentioned in Oliver Twist, in the chapter which
describes the journey of Sykes and Oliver one Winter’s
night through Sunbury on their way to Chertsey on a
burglarious expedition.

“As they passed Sunbury Church,” says Dickens, “the
clock struck seven. There was a light in the ferry-house
window opposite, which streamed across the road and threw
into more sombre shadow a dark yew-tree with graves
beneath it. There was a dull sound of falling water not
far off, and the leaves of the old tree stirred gently in the
night wind. It seemed like quiet music for the repose
of the dead.”

One hesitated to dismiss consideration of the yew with

74 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

ideas so mournful as those of the worshipful company of
poets, but a passage of such pathetic beauty as this of
Dickens leaves nought to be desired.

DOGWOOD (Cornus Sancuinga)

Companioning the yew spray on Plate XI. will be
found a piece of Dogwood, Cornus sanguinea, a shrub or
small tree that grows in the hedges, and is more especially
at home on the chalk. It is very common in Kent and
Sussex, the hedges, in some parts of these counties, the
downlands, being very largely composed of it. The
particular piece we figure was growing on the great chalk
plateau round Marlborough, in north Wiltshire, but we
have seen it in equal profusion around Guildford, in
the Isle of Wight, and, in fact, anywhere where the soil
conditions suit it. It makes an especially good charcoal
for gunpowder, and in some districts is largely grown
in coppices with a view to that use of it. It admits of
frequent cutting down, and starts again as vigorously as
ever ; a feature of great commercial value.

The crimson stem of the dogwood is very noticeable,
and is in fact the cause of its specific name, the Latin
adjective sanguinea signifying blood-red. When we see
the plant in Autumn or Winter bereft of its foliage, this
deep-red colour of its stems becomes especially prominent,
and is in itself sufficient to identify the plant by. The
dogwood may grow, when unchecked, to a height of
some sixteen feet.

The flowers are white, having four petals and four
stamens, and growing in rather close clusters at or near

DOGWOOD 75

the extremities of the shoots. They open in June. The
leaves are in pairs on the stems, broadly egg-shaped. In
the early Summer they have a hoary appearance from the
numerous small hairs with which they are covered, but
when fully developed this feature is not so_ noticeable.
They are very prominently veined, a feature clearly shown
in our drawing. In the Summer the foliage is of a clear
green colour, but in the Autumn it becomes a full rich
crimson. The fruit is globose in form and almost black
in colour. In taste it is very harsh and unpalatable, and
according to one old writer, who called the plant the
dog-berry tree, so nauseous that one would not even throw
it to a dog. He thereupon proceeds to declare that that
is why the plant is called dogwood, an explanation wholly
fanciful, and on a par with calling the hazel the lion-bush,
because one would never think of throwing the nuts to
a lion. We only quote an explanation so bizarre because
incidentally it at least testifies to the acridity of the dog-
wood berries. These berries, ripe in August or September,
freely yield, when pressed, an excellent oil.

The wood is very hard and durable, hence it is used
for the cogs of mill-wheels and other purposes where
strength and endurance are of value. It was once in great
demand for arrows, and may therefore fitly be placed in
the same drawing as the plant that was in great demand
for bows. It was also largely in demand by the butchers
for their skewers, hence one old name for it is prickwood.
The present name dogwood is a corruption of the old
English names dagger-wood or dagger, because the hard
stems can be held, when pointed, to be suggestive of such
a weapon. It was also called Gatter in mediaeval days,

76 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

from the Anglo-Saxon gad, or goad, a pointed stick, by
means of which the slow-going oxen at plough were
induced to develop, if even very temporarily, some little
accession of energy. In some old books, the writers, led
off on a wrong scent in the matter of derivation, call it
the hound’s-berry.

HONEYSUCKLE (Lonicera PericLyMENUM)

The Honeysuckle, so well known and so justly appre-
ciated, is probably better known to most people when it
is wreathing the hedgerows and encircling the hedgerow
trees with its wealth of fragrant blossom, than in its
fruiting stage, yet under this latter condition it is by no
means lacking in grace and attractiveness. Doubtless
some ninety-nine per cent. of our readers have in their
younger days, as they rambled down the country lanes,
pulled the blossoms for the sake of the honey at their
bases, and need, therefore, no explanation of its familiar
name. It may perhaps, however, be news to some to
know that our forefathers called the meadow clover a
honeysuckle as well, and for the same reason. In Anglo-
Saxon plant lists we find the honigsucle mentioned, but
we cannot quite definitely say which plant was intended.
In one early manuscript we find the rede hony suckle
gres included, but this was evidently the red clover, all
fodder plants being even now in agricultural lists often
considered as grasses, and so called. To-day, however,
we have but one candidate for the name of honeysuckle,
the graceful plant that throws its branches far and wide
over the other plants of the hedge or copse.

HONE VSUCKLE 77

With clasping tendrils it invests the branch,
Else unadorned, with many a gay festoon

And fragrant chaplet ; recompensing well

The strength it borrows with the grace it lends.

The reference to the clasping tendrils is a _poet’s
licence, or possibly a poet’s ignorance, the honeysuckle
not possessing them. The stems reach a length or height
sometimes of some twenty feet. They twine very freely
and have great constricting power. One may often come
across stems of hazel and other wood in the hedgerow
or coppice cut almost in half by them.’ The stems of
the honeysuckle twine from right to left, as do those of
the hop, bryony, and some other plants, while others,
again, as the dodder or the convolvulus, always twist
in the reverse direction to this around whatever support
they may attach themselves to.

The leaves are in pairs, and stalkless. They are ovate
in form, having their upper surfaces smooth, while the
lower faces are often a little downy or hairy. The blossoms
are tubular in form, very fragrant, of a creamy yellow
or white, and with roseate streaks. They are grouped
together in terminal heads, and will be found from June
to September. The honey they so freely contain is in
great request, some insects being able to reach it from
the upper part of the expanded flower, while others,
unable to do this, pierce the flower at its base and so
arrive at the prize. The fruit is a scarlet berry. These
berries are grouped some five or six together, and vary
considerably in size. They may be described as globose,

1 Tt grouth in woods and hedges and upon shrubbes and bushes,

oftentimes winding it selfe so straight and hard about that it leaveth his
print upon these things so wrapped.—GERARD.

78 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

but they are of a very pulpy nature, and when at all
compressed together lose somewhat of their typical rotundity.
They are from one- to three-celled, and contain but few
seeds. One old herbalist, we see, describes the fruit as
“like to little bunches of grapes, red when they be ripe.”
These berries have a succulent and somewhat tempting
look, but on trial they are found to be very acrid
and bitter. In rustic pharmacy they have been used as
an emetic.

The scientific name of the honeysuckle is Lonicera
periclymenum. The generic name was bestowed in honour
of one Adam Lonicer,! a German botanist, who died in
1586; while the specific title is from the Greek word to
entwine, in obvious allusion to the growth of the plant.
Another popular name for the honeysuckle is the woodbine,
in earlier days spelt wood-bind.”. This name is now not
often used, but it has always had a special attraction for
the poets. It was by early writers applied to various
climbers—to the clematis, for example—but for some three
centuries has been assigned to the honeysuckle alone.
Poetical as it may sound, we see that it is really prosaic
enough, and merely calls attention to the somewhat
inconvenient habit of the plant of utilising to their
detriment its neighbours. Shakespeare, it will be remem-

1 Such a method of handing down to posterity the name of a distinguished
manis much employed in botanical nomenclature. The Zode/éa, for example,
is so called in honour of Lobel, while the Zzzm@a recalls the great Linnzus,
Tillea the Italian writer Tilli, and the Vil/arsia Dominique Villars,

2 By aventure his way he gan to hold
To maken him a gerlond of the greves
Were it to woodbind, or of hauthorn leves.

Cuaucer, The Knightes Tale.

HONE YS UCKLE 79

bered, in Midsummer Night's Dream, uses both words,
where Titania exclaims—

Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms,

So doth the woodbine, the sweet honeysuckle,

Gently entwist.

Milton errs in applying the name “twisted eglantine”’
to the honeysuckle, since eglantime, as we have seen, is
an alternative name for the sweet-briar, but we find
Shakespeare clearly distinguishes between them in these
lines—

O’ercanopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine.

Shenstone, too, discriminates—

Come, gentle air! and while the thickets bloom
Convey the jasmin’s breath divine,

Convey the woodbine’s rich perfume,

Nor spare the sweet-leaved eglantine—

though his placing the jasmine, a purely garden flower,
in the thicket will scarcely bear over. In Anglo-Saxon
plant lists we find the honeysuckle appearing both as
wudu-wind and wudu-bind, the plant that both winds
and binds.

Milton writes in one of his poems of “ the well-attired
woodbine,” but elsewhere he sits him down upon a
bank “ with ivy canopied,” and proceeds to refer to the
“flaunting honeysuckle” ; and Thomson in like fashion
tells of ‘a bower where woodbines flaunt.” But this notion
of bold ostentation and self-assertion is very much beside
the mark, and all lovers of the plant—as, indeed, who are
not ?—will raise their protest. Cowper goes to the other

80 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

extreme, and pleases us no better, in calling it “ the wood-

>

bine, pale and wan”: the perfume, “never cloying,”
perhaps held as compensating for ‘her sickly looks’’—a
poor anemic thing indeed.

The honeysuckle, from its beauty, from the ease with
which it may be transplanted from the copse, from its
value in covering over arbour or fencing, is often introduced
into the garden. It will grow in almost any soil, and can
readily be propagated by layers or cuttings, September being
the best month for this purpose. It is one of the earliest
plants to expand its buds.

Like almost everything else, the honeysuckle has had
a goodly number of remedial virtues ascribed to it. In
comparatively recent times a decoction of the stems was
used for gout, while an infusion of the flower was held
of healing power for the victims of asthma. One old writer
declares that they cure the hicket—whatever that may
be; while another asserts that ‘the ripe seed gathered and
dried in the shadow and drunk remoueth wearisomenesse,”
while “the flowers steeped in oile and set in the sun is
good to annoint the bodie that is benummed and growne
verie cold.”

BLACKBERRY (Rusus Fruricosus)

In our twelfth illustration we have figured a spray of
the Blackberry, certainly one of the best known of our
hedge-plants, “going blackberrying” being a delightful
experience of our younger days that few, surely, have been
so unhappy as to have had no share in. While many
plants, as we have already seen to be the case with the

BLACKBERRY 8x

privet, the black nightshade, and the dogwood, have
black berries, the present plant, ignoring all such rivals,
claims to stand out in exclusive pre-eminence as the
blackberry.

In these days of highly scientific farming the picturesque
old-fashioned hedges are held in no favour, and are either
entirely removed, or else clipped almost out of their lives ;
removed, because for steam-cultivation it is well to throw
the many small fields of the old days into a few large ones
instead ; clipped, because one cannot now afford to have
a great mass of rambling material as many feet or even
yards thick as some of these old boundaries were, using
up and impoverishing much ground, and harbouring the
numerous birds that, in some cases rightly, in others
wrongly, the farmer regards as his sworn enemies. Our
forefathers, we know, not only tolerated large masses of
blackberry in their hedges, but deliberately planted them
there, for Tusser, who wrote on matters agricultural in
the sixteenth century, directs the farmer to—

Go plough up, or delve up, advised with skill,

The breadth of a ridge, and in length as ye will;

Then speedily quickset, for a fence ye will draw,

To sow in the seed of the bramble and haw.
Thus it is small wonder that we find the blackberry so
abundant in our country lanes, and many of these plants,
no doubt, may boast a very considerable antiquity. Else-
where we see in his book that he advises the farmers—

To plot not full

Ad bramble and hull,
For set no bar

Whilst month hath an R.

Divers old names for the plant we all recognise now

6

82 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

as the holly are ‘the holm, hulst, hull, and hulver. This
advice is given to the farmer for operations on the farm
in October. Stripped of its poetic charm and set forth
in the barest prose, the instruction is simply this—where
any sign of thinness in the fencing makes itself felt, fill
in the weak places either with bramble or with holly,
setting no time limitations to these planting operations,
so long only as the month when they are undertaken
justifies the work by the presence of the letter R in its
name. Hence the work might fitly be done in October ;
May, June, July, and August being by this stipulation
the only unsuitable months for the task.

Blackberries, too, appeal to the sentimental side of
our nature as we recall the tragedy of the Children in
the Wood,’ how, deserted, they wandered up and down
the woodland glades, and how—

Their pretty lips with blackberries
Were all besmeared and dyed,

And when they saw the darksome night
They sat them down and cry’d.

Blackberry is, in the language of the grammarians, a
noun of multitude, and signifieth many things, for while
the ordinary individual thinks he knows a blackberry-bush
when he sees one, the plants vary much in details of
growth, and, according to the more or less of importance
attached to these variations of form, so species are
multiplied until at last we arrive at this point, that one
authority admits only one type form with five, well-marked

1 Then sad he sung the Children in the Wood;
How blackberries they pluck’d in deserts wild.
? Gay, Pastorals.

DEWBERRY 83

varieties ; while another requires us to believe that we
have in Britain nearly fifty different kinds of blackberry !

The leaves of the blackberry are beautifully varied in
colour in the Autumn, being anything from strong orange
yellow to crimson, or purple, or rich brown, all these colours
being often found exquisitely mottled and combined on
one leaf, while the flowers, of delicate pink and beautiful
satin-like texture, are to the full as attractive. One very
pleasing feature, too, in the blackberry is that its flowering
and fruiting stages are of long duration, so they liberally
overlap, and one may at almost any time during the
Summer and Autumn find the plant in full flower and
yet showing its fruit in abundance, from the earliest little
green berries, or the larger and redder ones, to the full-
grown luscious fruit.

Blackberries eaten when ripe are very refreshing and
grateful to the taste, but before this are sour and astringent.
An excellent preserve is made from them ; those who have
assisted in gathering the fruit will scarcely need to be told
that the plant throws out long arched stems, and that these
are liberally provided with strong hooked prickles. These
long flexible branches root again on touching the ground,
and greatly assist in increasing the plant. One that we
have trained on our own garden wall grows many feet in a
season, and if not presently checked will entirely monopolise
it. Hundreds of pounds weight of fruit have been
gathered from this plant during some years of occupancy.

DEWBERRY (Rusus Casius)
The Dewberry, an allied species, has more slender
branches, and does not flower so freely as the blackberry,

84 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

but the great point of difference is found in the fruit, for
while this is somewhat smaller than that of the blackberry,
the grains of which it is built up are fewer, and, individually,
much larger, and it is covered with a rich purple bloom.
On testing it we find that its tempting appearance is not
belied on this closer acquaintance, as it is richer in flavour
and more succulent than the blackberry." In the black-
berry the five segments of the calyx at the base of the
fruit are throw back, while in the dewberry these segments
are narrower and longer and rise up round the fruit.
Botanically it is the Rubus caesius, and, though not so
common as the blackberry, the Rubus fruticosus, is very
generally distributed throughout the country.

CLOUD-BERRY (Rusus CHAM#£MoRUS)

Yet another Rubus, the R. chamemorus, is the Cloud-
berry, sometimes called the Knotberry, or the mountain
Bramble. This, however, is not a plant of the hedgerows,
but of the high peaty moorlands in the North of England,
in Wales, and in Scotland. Though a true bramble, as its
flowers and yet more its fruit indicate, it is but six inches
high, and unarmed with prickles. Its leaves are very like
those of the mallow, its flowers large and pure white, and
the fruits that succeed these are first scarlet and then of a
rich orange colour, and agreeably acid in flavour. They are
much larger than those of the blackberry, and an excellent
preserve may be made from them; or gathered fresh and

1 Be kind and courteous to this gentleman,
Hop in his walks, and gamboll in his eies,

Feed him with apricocks, and dewberries,
With purple grapes,

STONE BRAMBLE—RASPBERRY 85

eaten with sugar and cream they are, after a long day’s
tramp, most acceptable.

STONE BRAMBLE (Rusus Saxariis)

The Stone Bramble, Rudus saxatilis, is another member
of the bramble group, and, like the last, a native of the
northern and western mountain districts. It is sometimes
called Roebuck-berry. The fruit is crimson, composed of
but a few large grains, and excellent in flavour. The
flowers are few in number and of a greenish-white.

Why these different brambles should be called Rudus
is rather an open question, and where many theories are
advanced to explain anything we need scarcely stay to point
out that none of them are quite satisfying. One of these
derives the word from the Celtic word revs, to tear or
lacerate, while another hath it that the Celtic rud, red, is
the explanation. Fruticosus means shrubby, and is from
the Latin frutex. Casius is bluish-grey, in reference to the
beautiful bloom on the dewberry. Sawatilis signifies
pertaining to rocks.

RASPBERRY (Rusus Ipus)

Another valued fruit, and botanically again a close
relative of the blackberry, is the Raspberry, the Rudus ideus
of scientific nomenclature and classification. It should be
sought in woods and thick hedgerows, and more especially
in the north, though we have indulged sumptuously ' in its

1 One old author, we see, says that “ the fruit is good to be giuen to those
that haue weake and queasie stomachs,” but this testimonial is by no means

good enough. Had we had the pleasure of his company in Devonshire, he
would, we think, have modified this statement considerably.

86 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

scarlet berries in the lanes of Devonshire, not by any means
one of our most northern counties, and have assisted with
the greatest satisfaction in many a glorious raspberry-
gathering expedition in Wiltshire. Indeed, it is, we believe,
possible to go raspberry-seeking—not, perhaps, quite the
same thing as raspberry-finding—almost within sight of the
dome of the Metropolitan Cathedral, as the plants maybe
found on several of the open common lands around London.

Though the individual fruits are smaller than those
of the cultivated plant, they are as fragrant and luscious,
and the preserve they make is fully equal to the garden
product. They are also in such profusion that the basket
quickly fills, and as they grow on stems some four feet
high, Nature has given a very happy medium indeed to
the gatherer, avoiding on one hand the continuous stooping
that befalls the picker of the hedge-bank strawberries,’ and
the considerable reaching that is sometimes necessary
to gain possession of those particularly fine blackberries
that look so very tempting high overhead, and which are
so magnificently ripe because so ungetatable. The stems
are covered with a soft downiness, and are furnished with
weak and small prickles. The foliage, green above, has
the lower surface almost white, a very noticeable feature
when a breeze sets all in motion ; this arises from the felting
of greyish-down or soft hairs with which this under face of
the leaf is covered. The flowers are small, the petals white
and narrow, scarcely rising above the calyx, and therefore
very inconspicuous.

1 The blushing Strawberry
Which lurks, close-shrouded from high-looking eyes,
Shewing that sweetness low and hidden lies.

STRAWBERRY 87

Old writers often call the plant the Raspis, or the
Hindberry. Pliny mentions it centuries ago as the Idea,
the Greeks so calling it after Mount Ida, where it was
abundant, and we to-day, in memory of this, call it
specifically ideus.

The garden raspberry is but the result of cultivation
at the hands of the gardeners of the wild indigenous plant.
Dr. Turner says, in his Herbal of the Year 1568, that “ the -
raspis is found in many gardines of England.”” Gerard, in
his Generall Historie of Plantes,—our edition is dated 1633,
—says that “the Raspis is planted in gardens,” but adds,
“it groweth not wilde that I knew of, except in the field
by a village in Lancashire called Harwood, not far from
Blackburne.” Worledge, in his “Systema Agriculture,
being the Mystery of Husbandry discovered and layd
open,” our edition being that of 1675, declares that
“Rasberries are not to be omitted out of the number
of the most pleasant and usefull Fruits, which yield one
of the most pleasant Juyces of any Fruit, and being
extracted and preserved, will serve to tinge any other
Liquor with its delicate Aromatick Gust.”

STRAWBERRY (Fracarta Vesca)

On the sloping hedgebank or in the copse one
may find the Strawberry, Fragaria vesca, in considerable
abundance. It is one of our indigenous plants, known
to our Anglo-Saxon forefathers as the streowberie, while
its botanical name bears testimony to its worth, being
compounded of two Latin words signifying fragrant and
good for food. By the ancients it was called the morbus

838 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

terrestre, the mulberry that grows upon the ground; not
a particularly happy title. It forms the subject of our
thirteenth illustration.

The flowers, as our figure shows, are white and
five-petalled, and having in their centres a prominent mass
of brownish-yellow stamens that makes a very effective little
colour-contrast with the corolla. These little white, earth-
born stars strew abundantly the banks and hedgerows and
copses from May onward, and are in turn succeeded by
the scarlet-crimson fruit.

One uses the broad term fruit as descriptive of the
pistil arrived at maturity, but it is sufficiently evident,
on looking around us, that this arrival of fruition fulfils
itself in many ways, reveals itself in many forms, a pea-
pod, for example, a blackberry, and an acorn being very
unlike in appearance. This fruit of the strawberry, in
popular diction a berry, is somewhat abnormal in its
structure. This any of our readers who have not thought
it out will readily realise if they consider that what they
term its seeds are upon its outer surface, and that they
have always, hitherto, been accustomed to expect to find
any seeds, not on the outside certainly, but stowed away
within the fruit; a pea-in-pod-wise or pip-in-apple-like
arrangement. These so-called seeds, however, in the
strawberry (they are carpels really, each containing a
single seed) are scattered over the fleshy receptacle that
gives to them a resting-place and to ourselves a succulent
and toothsome morsel.

The strawberry is found extending all over Europe
and Northern Africa, throughout Siberia and Western Asia,
but not penetrating across the Himalaya to the torrid

STRAWBERRY 89

plains of India ; throughout, also, the temperate regions
of North America. We have, for instance, in our own
dried collection a little wild strawberry-plant from Goat
Island, nurtured amidst the spray and turmoil of Niagara.

The garden varieties, of which there are many
hundreds,! all spring from this little wildling, and those
who gather a dish of its fruit, admit, after a judicious
application of cream and sugar, that even in comparison
with any of its cultivated descendants it leaves little to be
desired. New varieties are made by crossing and re-
crossing existing kinds ; there is now no need to revert to
the original species, but it is distinctly interesting to see
them doing so in earlier days. In one old book we
read that “the ordinary red strawberry grows plentifully
in the new-fallen copses,? from whence, if you take your
plants about August, you will have a very fair encrease.”
While Tusser, pointing out the work to be done in
September, says—

Wife, into the garden, and set me a plot

With strawberry roots, of the best to be got ;
Such growing abroad, amongst thorns in the wood,
Well chosen and pricked, prove excellent good,

From a song of about the year 1480, we see that the

‘ “The President of the Horticultural Society, Thomas Andrew Knight, Esq.,
states that he has at this time not less than four hundred varieties of this
fruit in his garden.” This passage we extract from Zhe Companion to the
Orchard, published in 1831, and is interesting as showing what was being
done even then,

* The Putting forth of certaine Herbes discovereth of what Nature the
Ground where they are put forth, is: As Wilde Thyme sheweth good
Feeding Ground for Cattell; Betory and Strawberries shew Grounds fit
for Wood.

Bacon, Sylva Sylvarum, 1620.

go THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

crying of Strawberries in the streets was even so early as
this a recognised institution in the metropolis.

Straw is often put around the garden plants, and for
a twofold purpose, the retention of the moisture beneath it,
and the cleanlier growth of the fruit above it, and some
would tell us that here is an obvious reason why the
plant is called the strawberry. Others say, not so at all,
but rather because it was long the custom for children
to gather the berries in the woods and thread them on
straws of grass for sale, a custom that still obtains in
some parts of the country. Neither of these explanations
meets the case. The first half of the word is sometimes
straw, sometimes strew, or strow, or stray in old authors,
but is, in any case, based on the Anglo-Saxon verb streaw,'
to scatter, disperse, or spread, and refers to the growth
of the plant ages before either straw or straws had any-
thing to do with it. The strawberry, wild or cultivated,
throws out runners most freely ; these root, and again
repeat the process, so that in a short space of time the
area covered by the plant is greatly increased. If, there-
fore, we find the strawberry at all, we find it in profusion,
aggressively covering a considerable distance along the
hedgebank, and with no regard at all to the rights of its
companions.

“The water of the Berries carefully distilled is a
soveraign remeday and Cordiall,” declares one venerable
authority, “in the palpitations of the heart, that is the

1 And fulle myche peple spredden her clothes in the wey, other kitterdon
braunchis of trees and strewiden in the weye.—Wic LiF. St. Matthew xxi,

And so thyder he rode to dyner, and so alyghted there, and went into

his chambre, the whyche was strawed with grene herbes, and the walls sette
fulle of grene bowes, to make the chambre more fresh,—Fvoissart’s Cronycle.

STRAWBERRY gt

panting and beating of the heart, and it is good to the

* overflowing of the Gall, which causeth the yellow Jaundice.
The Berries themselves are excellent good to refresh and
comfort the fainting Spirits, and to quench thirst.” Some
people have even been known to eat strawberries because
they liked them, and found in that a sufficient justification
for their internal application. Dryden tells us of happy
folk who were “content with food which Nature freely
bred,” and so “on wildlings and on strawberries they fed.”
The only serious drawback that we know of to strawberries
is that they are procurable for too short a time, and so
these contented people that Dryden appears to have found
somewhere would perforce have in a short season to change
their dietary.

The Syrupus pilosella, a mixture in favour with our
ancestors as a soothing and healing preparation, owes
something at least to the strawberry, though, as that
appears to be about one-thirtieth of the prescription, we
cannot quite say what proportion of the accruing benefit
may be ascribed to it. ‘Take of Mouse-ear three handfuls,
the roots of Lady’s-mantle one and half ounce, the roots of
Comfrey, Madder, white Dittany, Tormentil, Bistort, of
each an ounce, the leaves of Wintergreen, Horse-tail,
Ground-ivy, Plantain, Adder’s tongue, Strawberries,
St. John’s-wort, with the flowers, Golden-rod, Agrimony,
Betony, Burnet, Avens, Cinquefoil, red Colewort, red
Roses, of each a handful, boil them gently in six pounds
of Plantain water to three, then strain it, and when it is
settled add Gum Tragacanth, the seeds of Fleawort, Marsh
Mallows, and Quinces made into a Mussilage by themselves
in Strawberry water, of each three ounces, white sugar two

92 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

pounds. Boil it to the thickness of honey.” The fabrication
of pilosella evidently required a very considerable know-
ledge of our wild plants before one could say quite happily,
“ prescriptions accurately dispensed.”

BARBERRY (BERsERIS VULGARIS)

In many parts of Britain, but more especially in the
north, one may find the Barberry, often merely a shrub, but
at times considerably more. It is a plant of the hedgerows,
copses, and open woods. It has rather a partiality for a
chalk soil. As a hedge-plant it has its attractions, as it is
tremendously thorny and bushy, grows rapidly, is close-
growing, and takes free-clipping kindly. It is often from
its ornamental character transferred to the shrubbery, being
very attractive when in early Summer a mass of yellow
blossom, in Autumn a mass of scarlet fruit.

The leaves are very numerous, small, of a palish green,
clustered together, oval in form, stiff in character, minutely
toothed, each serration prolonged, so that the leaf appears as
though fringed with fine hairs; at the base of each leaf
cluster one finds three thorns, or, to be more correct,
one thorn that at its base spreads into three arms. “ The
leaves,” quoth one of the ancients, “are vsed of diuers to
season meate with, and instead of a Sallad, as be those of
Sorrell.” They have a pleasant acidity, as one quickly
determines on biting a small portion.

The flowers are yellow and six-petalled, arranged in
pendulous clusters, racemes, and flowering in the early
Summer. On first opening they have the delicate smell
of the cowslip, but the odour towards evening and on

BARBERRYV 93

nearing decay soon becomes very disagreeable... The
stamens are curiously sensitive. When the flower is first
expanded they spread outwards, but when their bases are
touched by insects they spring inwards, and the pollen is
brought into contact with the central organ. One can
readily produce the effect by touching them with a pin
or piece of twig.

The berries are somewhat small. They are described
as being ovoid, long oval, cylindrical, and so forth, but, if
the dignity of the subject will permit of the homely
comparison, we may venture to say that they are the shape
of a sausage. They are generally a little curved, and of
a brilliant scarlet colour, each being tipped with the little
black style. Their texture and appearance is very coral-
like. They are exceedingly sour to the taste, and strongly
astringent, so that one is not tempted to try more than the
first. In France large quantities of malic acid are prepared
from them. Even birds decline acquaintance with these
berries, tempting as they look, but, on being made by the
housekeeper into a jelly or conserve, with due proportion
of sugar, they are very acceptable, or they may be gathered
while yet green and pickled. Medicinally they have been
employed from their cooling efficacy,*® in fevers, and they

1 The author had a barberry-tree in his garden near twenty feet in height,
the branches of which extended over a circumference of sixty feet. When
covered with blossom in the Spring, it had a pleasing effect in the shrubbery,
but was so offensive for about a fortnight, that no one could walk near it
during that time.—PHILLIps, Companion for the Orchard.

* The fruit is cooling, quenching thirst and restraining Chollerick and
pestillentiall Vapors, and is of very good use in Agues, if either the Conserve
or the Syrup thereof be taken with the Syrup of Violettes. The sayd juyce
also or the Berries themselves is often used for those that loath their Meat,
to procure an Appetite. It is good also to fasten loose Teeth—Adam in
Eden.

94 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

make an excellent gargle for sore throats. They have also
supplied a remedy for jaundice.

The bark, from its astringency, has been employed in
tanning leather, while the stems and roots, prepared with
alum, yield a strong yellow dye for fabrics or for staining
wood for cabinet-work. In Queen Elizabeth’s time we
find the ladies steeping barberry and ash roots together, and
preparing a compound therefrom for the creation of golden
hair.

The Arab name for the plant is Barbaris, and the
botanical name, Berderis, is derived from this. One curious
old name that we find for the barberry is the piprage, or
pipperidge, meaning literally the red-pip ; the French words
pepin and rouge supplying the derivation. It is bestowed
in obvious allusion to the hard pip-like scarlet berries.

Since barberry is a constituent we append another of
these tremendous prescriptions of our forefathers. This
time it is the Syrupuse Coralliis compositus. “Syrup of
Coral restores such as are in consumptions, is of a gallant
cooling nature, and very cordial.” To make this admirable
preparation, so cooling yet so warming, we “take of red
Coral six ounces, in very fine powder and levigated upon a
marble, add of clarified juice of Lemons sixteen ounces,
clarified juice of Barberries eight ounces, sharp white wine
Vinegar and juice of Wood-sorrel, of each six ounces ; mix
them together and put them ina glass stopped with cork
and bladder, shaking it every day till it have digested eight
days, then filter it and take juice of Quinces half a pound,
sugar of Roses twelve ounces. Make them into a syrup
in a bath, adding Syrup of Clove-gilliflowers sixteen ounces.”
This, we imagine, would be a still more admirable prepara-

BIRD-CHERRY 95

tion if the pounded coral could be taken out. Under these
circumstances certainly it would require renaming, but that,
after all, is a detail, and of much less importance than
swallowing ground-up coral.

BIRD-CHERRY (Prunus Papus)

We may from time to time find the Bird-Cherry, Prunus
Padus, ordinarily as a hedgerow plant, but sometimes as
a goodly tree of twenty feet in height. It bears in the
Spring long pendant and graceful bunches of white
blossoms. These are followed in due course by the fruit,
hanging in bunches, something like currants. These are
at first green, then red, and finally, in August, deep black.
They are nauseous in taste. Our forefathers, or more
probably our foremothers, used to tie these berries round
the necks of their children to ward off various evils, bodily,
mental, and spiritual, from them. Birds are very partial
to the fruits ; they are, in fact, as the name suggests, the
birds’ cherries, though, unfortunately for the fruit-grower,
they by no means confine themselves to them. They are
sometimes called heg-berries, hag-berries, or hack-berries,
the first half of the word in each case having as its root
the Anglo-Saxon hege, a hedge. The name, in one or
other of these forms, is centuries old, but does not strike
one as being a particularly happy one, as they are no more
and no less hedge-berries than many other plants, hawthorn,
privet, ivy, blackthorn, and many others that at once occur
to us.

96 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

CUCKOO-PINT (Arum Macutatum)

Our fourteenth illustration depicts the brilliant berries
of the Cuckoo-Pint, or wild Arum, the Arum maculatum.
This plant, common enough almost everywhere in damp
and shady hedgerows or under the shade of the trees in
the copse, is curious in the way it presents itself to us
under such an entirely different guise at different times
of the year. In the Spring we see its quaint inflorescence
rising from the ,midst of its mass of foliage, then that all
passes out of sight and is forgotten, and presently when
the Autumn days come we see the scarlet spikes, such we
have figured, rising amidst the low vegetation in their naked
simplicity, the leaves, like the flowers, having disappeared
months ago.

The leaves are bright and shining, as though highly
glazed or varnished, and are of arrow-head shape. They
are of a deep green colour, blotched over with purple spots
of various sizes. They are so acrid that they inflame and
irritate the skin, and may even raise blisters. Bulliard, in
his Histoire des Plantes Vénémeuses, instances the case of
three children who ate some of these berries. They were
seized with horrible convulsions, their throats becoming
so swollen that they were unable to swallow anything ;
two of them quickly died, while the third was saved with
great difficulty.

The flowers are very peculiar in structure, a central club-
like body bearing on its lower portion a ring of pistillate
flowers, and above these the staminiferous ones, the whole
being surrounded by a large leafy sheath. The flowering
season is April and May. In the Autumn, as we have

CUCKOO PINT.

CUCKOO-PINT 97

indicated, one finds the spike of berries. These berries
are very lightly attached to the flesh stem, so that on
the slightest provocation they come away. There will be
noticed on each of our pieces, and especially on the right
hand one, the scars where they have been detached. They
are, though at first green, of a brilliant and rather orange-
scarlet colour, globose, and succulent ; each berry is one-
celled, containing one or more hard seeds. Being of a
rather soft nature one finds them when packed closely
together losing somewhat of their roundness under this
pressure. They are devoured by many birds, pheasants,
and others.

The whole plant is very violent in its action and to
be carefully eschewed by humanity. The root is in its
raw state very poisonous, inodorous, and at first insipid,
but soon causing an intensely strong burning and pricking
sensation in the throat that may last for hours. Coles, in
the year 1657, finds an extraordinary use for it. He declares
that “the fresh Roots cut small and mixed with a Sallet,
will make excellent sport with a sawcey guest, and drive him
away from his over-much boldness, and so will the Powder
of the dry Root, sterewed upon any dainty bit that is given
him to eat. For either way, within a while after the taking
it, it will so burn, and pinch his mouth and throat that he
shall not be able to eat any more, or scarce to speak for
pain.” When we can feel that the hint has been taken, we
may, “to take away the stinging, give the party so served new
milk and fresh butter.” Starch and flour have both been
made from the dried root, the action of heat removing the
deleterious properties. ‘‘ The Juyce of the Berries boyled in
Oyl of Roses easeth pains in the Ears, and a dram or more

vi

98 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

being beaten and taken is a most present and sure Remedy
for Poyson and the Plague,” we are told, though surely
this can only be on the principle that the patient being
killed off by the cuckoo-pint is troubled by the plague no
more, since the weaker poison succumbs to the stronger.
It resembles too much the prescribing of a good strong
dose of prussic acid as a remedy to cure arsenical poisoning.

CHAPTER II

The Trees of the Forest—The Monarch Oak—Acorns as Food—Oak-mast
for the Pigs—Panage in Domesday Book—Oak Galls of various kinds
—The Beech—St. Leonard’s Forest Experiences—Name-carving—Beech-
mast—The Hornbeam—The Scotch Fir, or Pine—Its Mountain Home—
Cones, Pine-apples—The Larch—Planted by the Million—Spanish
Chestnut—As an Article of Food—Abnormal Cluster—The Horse-
Chestnut—A Central Asian Tree—The Birch—The Lady of the Woods
—Greenland’s one Tree—Its Silvery Bark—The Books of Numa—
Witches’ Knots—Attraction of Sap to Butterflies—The Birchen-rod—The
“Village Schoolmistress "—The Ash—The “Venus of the Woods ”—The
Husbandman’s Tree—Elizabethan Statute for the Preservation of Timber
—Ash-keys—Peter-keys—Norden on Sussex Iron-furnaces—Shrew-ash
—The Serpent’s Antipathy—The Rowan, or Mountain Ash—Difference
of Opinion on Floral Odours—The Witchen-tree—Preservative from
the Evil Eye—The Service-tree—Service-berries as Food—The Sycamore
—The Biblical Sycamore—The Great Maple—The False Plane—
Sycamore-wine—Fungoid Growth on the Leaves—Winged Fruits—
Distribution of Seeds of the Sycamore—The Maple—Maser-tree—The
Plane—Its peeling Bark—A Town-tree—Irrigation with Wine—The
Holly—The Saturnalia again—Tunbridge Ware—The Flail—The City
of Tibur—“ As Pliny saith ”—Bird-lime.

OAK (Quercus Rosgur)

E propose in the present chapter to deal more
especially with the trees of the forest. Amongst

these one stands pre-eminent, and in unchallenged
supremacy, the Oak. In its massive strength, in its
endurance, in its picturesque grandeur, in the magnitude
it attains to, in its association with our island story,
beneath its sacred shade the home of Druidic worship,

99

100 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

or carrying across the ocean the flag of England, the
Mistress of the Seas, it stands alone in interest, in regal
majesty. As the yew-tree won for us Cressy and Agincourt,
so the oak bestowed on us, some little thanks also being
due to the passengers it carried, Trafalear and many
another glorious victory.

It will be observed in our illustration, Plate XV.,
that the leaves are what is botanically termed sessile, or,
in other words, stalkless, while the acorns are borne on
a stalk, or, botanically, a peduncle ; and thereby hangs a
tale. We have in England two distinct forms of oak,
in one of which, as in our figure, the leaves are sessile
and the acorns pedunculate, and this has been distinguished
as the Quercus pedunculata; while in the other these
conditions are reversed, the leaves being stalked while
the acorns are not, and so this has been differentiated
as the Quercus sessiliflora. While some would give
distinct specific value to these characteristics, others would
tell us that they are but variations, and that, whichever
form we find, it is in any case the grand old British oak,
one and indivisible, the Quercus robur. Our illustration,
therefore, is that of the Q. robur, if we sink these
minor differences; Q. robur pedunculata, if we like to
reckon them as but a variation of form, to be recognised
if we so choose, but not to be thought over-much of ;
or the Q. pedunculata, if we insist on ascribing import-
ance to them. The pedunculate form is generally the
more abundant, but in some districts the sessile-fruited
is found almost exclusively. When the oak was the
foundation of our naval supremacy, it was thought
at first that one variety supplied better timber than the

OAK

OAK IOI

other, but protracted experiment showed that there was
nothing to choose between the two, the more or less
of excellence depending really upon soil, locality, and
other considerations quite outside the presence or absence
of a leaf or acorn stem.

The name Quercus is open to more than one explanation.
That this should be the Latin word for an oak-tree
would seem sufficiently to account for its present employ-
ment, but some would tell us that the name is derived
from the Celtic words guer, beautiful, and cuez, a tree.
In the Gaelic tongue the oak was called \darach, and in
Greek dras. From this latter is derived the word dryad,
and some would venture to find also in ‘it a justification for
druid. The Celtic word, however, for the oak being derw,
we find a fairly reasonable derivation without wandering
so far afield as Athens in search of it. The specific name
is the Latin robur, signifying strength, while our popular
name oak descends to us from Anglo-Saxon times, when
our tree was the ac.

The curiously waved outline of the oak-leaf is
indicated in our drawing. In the Spring the foliage is of
a rich red colour that presently merges into].green, and is
again transformed, as Autumn advances, into a rusty brown.
These brown and curled-up leaves often remain on the
tree until dispossessed in the Spring by the new growth.
The flowers of the oak are, as in most forest trees, very
inconspicuous. We have already had in our pages more
than one example—the hop, for instance—of the male
flowers being found on one plant, and the female on
another, the arrangement known botanically as dicecious,
but in others the pistillate and the staminate flowers,

102 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

though distinct, are found on the same plant, an arrange-
ment technically termed moneecious. To this latter class
the oak belongs. The stamen-bearing flowers are found
in slender pendulous catkins, from two or three inches
long, each individual flower in the group consisting of
some six to twelve stamens, surrounded at their bases by
a ring of very small scales, while the pistillate flowers are
erect and solitary, surrounded by a ring or cup of con-
spicuous scales or bracts. This ring presently develops
and coheres, hardening into the cup of the acorn. The
flowers appear in April or May, simultaneously with the
bursting leaf-buds.

The fruit of the oak, the well-known acorn, is com-
posed of two very distinct features, the central nut, and
the ring of encircling bracts, or cup, at its base. It is
ripe in October. When mature the supply of moisture
is withheld, the nut shrinks a little in consequence, and
becomes held loosely in its cup, and so a gust of wind
then suffices to throw it to the ground.

When a plant has matured its seed, Nature has next
to prepare for its dispersion ; nourishment, as we see, is
withdrawn, and the stems and seed-chambers become dry
and fragile ; the Autumn gales then sweep down alike on
forest or on flower-bed, and the gusts scatter far and wide
the ripened seeds. In this way the acorn is thrown from
its cup as a ball is tossed from one’s hand. Nature, too,
has many assistant gardeners: the schoolboy that gathers a
pocketful of acorns, and presently tires of them, drops them,
or throws them aimlessly away; the squirrels and other
woodland creatures that hoard, and bury, and sometimes
forget the position of their larder; the forest ponies or

OAR 103

the deer, that with sharply pointed hoof dig in the
moist ground a resting-place for the acorns, and, trampling
restlessly around, dibble them securely in for their
winter’s sleep. The empty cups, their mission so far
accomplished, then become, if we may believe Shakespeare,
who knew a good deal about most things, the homes of
the fairies.

Dioscorides’ and other venerable authors attributed
great healing virtues to acorns. Despite the high position
they once held in ancient therapeutics, they have long since
lost their reputation in matters medicinal. On looking
again at this last sentence, it struck us as being a little
vague, as applying equally to either the acorns or the
venerable authors ; and our first thought was to erase it
and try again, but as the statement would indeed apply
with equal force to either we retain it proudly as a
model of compression. Acorns, long after their medical
value was set at nought, were tolerated by mankind
under stern necessity as an article of diet, but such food
is too bitter and austere to be used continuously, and
we may well regard Cowley’s rhapsody on some unknown
heroic race as having but slight relation to the facts.
He declares that—

Heroes on earth once lived, men good and great,

Acorns their food; thus fed they flourished
And equalled in their age the long-lived oak.

1 Dioscorides was a physician, and approached the study of plants from
the medical point of view. He lived in the time of Nero. He, Hippocrates,
and Theophrastus are the great authorities for all Greek plant-names
and plant-uses up to a little beyond the time of the commencement of the
Christian era,

104 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

While another writer goes yet further and asserts that
these men—

When fed with oaken mast
The aged trees themselves in years surpassed.

If so it is an interesting illustration of that great law,
the survival of the fittest, those who could thrive on acorns
being practically unkillable. According to Chaucer “ thei
weren wonte lightlie to slaken hir hunger at euen with
akehornes of okes,” but this would appear to be merely
a light supper before turning in, and not a solid dietary.

Famines frequently occurred in earlier days, and in the
Saxon Chronicle we read of one special time of dearth and
scarcity in the year 1116, when it is stated, “this year
was so wanting in mast that there was never heard such
in all this land.” We must remember that this natural
provision of oak-corn, while of very slight nutritive value
to man, furnished a valuable food for swine, and one that
they greatly appreciated and throve on.

From oak to oak they run with eager haste.
And wrangling share the first delicious taste

Of fallen acorns; yet but thinly found,
Till the strong gale has shook them to the ground, !

We find swine’s flesh the principal animal food of most
tribes and peoples in an early stage of civilisation, whether
on a South Sea Island or dwelling in an English shire,
since pigs multiply rapidly, and, herding together, need
but little oversight. The scarcity of mast in this Saxon
time of dearth meant therefore not scarcity of acorns for
the man and his family, but for his pigs; yet if these

1 Bloomfield, Farmer's Boy.

OAK 105

primarily, were on insufficient diet of acorns, he per-
force, secondarily, had to go on short commons of pork,
and so, the acorn crop being a failure, he starved.

We have been told by farmers that if pigs are allowed
to eat too freely of acorns the resulting bacon is wanting
in firmness and good quality, but we are possibly in this
matter more critical than our forefathers. According to
Harrison, however, as we read in his Description of
England, this view that acorns are not a suitable diet either
for pigs or poultry would appear to be a very just one:

“Jn time of plenty of mast, our red and fallow deere
will not let to participat thereof with our hogs, more than
our nete : yea, our common pultrie also, if they may come
vnto them. But as this abundance dooth prooue verie
pernicious vnto the first, so the egs which these latter doo
bring foorth (beside blackenesse in color and bitternesse
of tast), haue not seldome beene found to breed diuerse
diseases vnto such persons as haue eaten of the same.”

It will be noted that the word “let” has its old sense
of hinder, and not its modern and contrary significance
of permit. The passage tells us that when the acorns
are ripe the wild forest deer have no notion of being
hindered from being participants in Nature’s bounty, but
claim full share with the farmer’s hogs and stock generally.
Tusser, we see, strongly advises that the “nete” should
not be allowed to share in this feasting.

To gather some mast, it shal stand thee vpon,
with seruant and children, er mast be al gon:

Some left among bushes shal pleasure thy swine,
for feare of a mischiefe keepe acorns fro kine.

We are startled by the assertions of ancient writers,

106 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

that acorns in early times formed a welcome diet, but we
must bear in mind an important point : that these venerable
authorities were Latins or Greeks, dwellers around the
Mediteranean, and that the acorns they referred to
were not those of the English Oak at all, but of South
European species that bear fruit at once nutritious and
inviting. The evergreen oak, Q. i/ex, abundant throughout
South Europe, bears a fruit that in flavour resembles a
nut. Another oak, also evergreen, the Q. ballota, is almost
equally common, and yields an abundant supply of nutri-
tious acorns. During the Peninsular War both the French
and English soldiers found welcome subsistence on these
in the great woods round Salamanca and elsewhere.

One of the most unpopular and vexatious acts of William
the Conqueror, in his passion for converting the great forest
tracts into his own hunting grounds, was the restriction
that was imposed on the keeping of hogs by the common
people, and this grievance sorely rankled until, in the
great explosion of wrath against King John that culminated
at Runnymede, these restrictions were greatly modified in
the great Charter of English liberty that he was there
compelled to sign.

In Domesday Book the woodlands are valued not for
their timber—the time for that had not yet come—but by
the number of swine to which they would yield panage;
and so closely was this calculated that we even find patches
of forest ground entered as “of one hog.” The right
of turning out swine in the forest was of great value.
We find it in Saxon times often assigned as an endowment
to a monastery, and more than once it is the dowry of a
king’s daughter. About the end of the seventh century,

OAK 107

King Ina, amongst the few laws that he enacted to regulate
the simple economy of our Saxon ancestors gave particular
directions concerning these panage rights. Injuring or
destroying trees was by him made penal,’ the fine being
thirty shillings, a large sum at that time, unless the tree
were large enough for thirty hogs to stand beneath it,
when the penalty was doubled. Offa, King of Mercia, the
treacherous assassin of Ethelbert, King of East Anglia,
gave to atone for his many sins, a large piece of land to the
See of Canterbury, in pascua porcorum, for the pasturage
of the swine of the Archbishop. Deeds of Edward the
Confessor and other sovereigns are yet extant where this
panage forms an important item in the gift of land or the
transfer of its ownership.

The oak is particularly subject to attack by various
small creatures, and in consequence bears not acorns alone,
but many abnormal growths—oak-galls, oak-apples, oak-
spangles, and not a few others. One of the commonest
of these is figured in our illustration. Bacon, in his
Sylva Sylvarum, declares that “there is no Tree, which
besides the Naturall Fruit, doth beare so many Bastard
Fruits as the Oake doth: For besides the Acorne, it
beareth Galls, Oake-Apples, and certaine Oak-Nuts, which
are Inflammable: And certaine Oake-Berrie, sticking close
to the Body of the Tree, without Stalke. It beareth also
Mistletoe, though rarely. The Cause of all these may
be, the Closenesse and Solidnesse of the Wood, and Pith

1 In like manner, in the Mosaic dispensation, it was enacted that even
in an enemy’s country and in time of war “thou shalt not destroy the trees
thereof, by forcing an axe against them; thou mayest eat of them, but thou
shalt not cut them down, for the tree of the field is man’s life.”

108 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

of the Oake: Which maketh severall Iuyces find severall
Eruptions. And therefore if you will desire to make any
Super-Plants, you must euer give the Sap Pentifull Rising
and Hard Issue.”” These oak apples are a purely adventitious
growth ; masses of dried and diverted sap. A little insect
punctures the stem and then deposits its eggs within the
wood. This causes abnormal action to be set up, and within
the resulting globular forms the eggs are carefully protected.
These are hatched about Midsummer, and, if after this
time we cut these little balls open, we shall find some little
white grubs snugly ensconced within. These eventually,
as winged creatures, force their way out, and fly away to
repeat afresh the preliminary stages in oak-apple growing.
The “apple” when first formed is often beautifully varied
in colour with tints of brown and green and pink and
sufficiently suggestive of a real though miniature apple to
account for its name. The round oak-galls, so familiar to
every one, are formed ina very similar way: they are first
green in colour and then brown and when they have arrived
at this stage we may ordinarily see in them plainly enough
the little circular puncture by which the once imprisoned
creature found its way to freedom. They are sometimes,
from their spherical form, called marble-galls: they may
be seen figured in our illustration.

Another very common form is that known as the arti-
choke gall, where a leaf-bud has been attacked and its due
development arrested, so that we get in its place a mass
of brown scales. Yet another gall of frequent occurrence
is known as the oak-spangle. These are to be found
studding the under surfaces of the leaves, at first crimson,
then a rich brown in colour, small in size, but generally

BEECH 109

numerous, so that the leaf is literally spangled over
with them.

Some fifteen hundred insects are supported by the
oak in one stage or other of their existence. To catalogue
these in our pages would be a work of supererogation, but
we may at least mention that glorious butterfly the Purple
Emperor and the Red-Underwing and Wood-Leopard
moths, and amongst beetles the well known Cockchafer.

BEECH (Facus Sytvarica)

The Beech, perhaps the most beautiful of all our trees,
and second only in its grand proportions to the oak, is
freely distributed all over the South of England, sometimes
in association with other trees, often in solitary grandeur,
while in some districts forming magnificent forests, as at
Savernake, in Wiltshire. Evelyn, who is generally regarded
as no mean authority on trees, has yet the hardihood to
assert that “on the whole the massy full-grown luxuriant
beech is rather a displeasing tree.” This is rank heresy.
Sir T. Dick Lauder, in editing Gilpin’s Forest Scenery,
refers, on the other hand, to “ the pleasure arising from the
contemplation of a noble beech, as one of the most
magnificent objects of God’s fair creation ” ; while yet another
authority declares equally uncompromisingly that “ the beech
must certainly rank as second only to the oak, for majesty
and picturesqueness ; while, for the union of grace and
nobility, it may claim precedence over every other member
of our Sylva.”

The beech is particularly common on ground of
calcareous nature, but is by no means confined to such

110 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

localities. Provided only the substratum be dry and well
drained the tree thrives well on most soils, and especially
if the position be somewhat high.’ We have seen
magnificent beeches on the chalk at Deepdene, in Surrey,
and others as fine on the sand at Haslemere, in the same
country. The finest beech-trees are said to grow in
Hampshire, though the Buckinghamshire people dissent
from this view in favour of their own county. We have
seen magnificent specimens in Kent and in St. Leonard’s
Forest, Sussex. The cottagers of the Forest have a belief
that the great saint himself, St. Leonard, sleeping in these
umbrageous recesses, was inhospitably disturbed by the
vipers, and his repose broken by the singing of the
nightingales. Ordinary folks would have to put up with
such inconveniences or go, but such saintly men as St.
Patrick or St. Leonard require the inconveniences to go
instead, and so ever since his visit

The viper has ne’er been krown to sting,
Or the nightingale e’er been heard to sing.

It is generally considered that the beech is one of our
indigenous trees. Cesar, it is true, specifically declares
that it is not; affirming in his writings that the trees of
Gaul and of Britain are alike, except that the latter has
neither beech nor fir; but after all his opportunities of
observation were not so absolutely far-reaching that we
need feel that his simple statement settles the question,
as it is proverbially difficult to prove a negative.

1 This Tree grows plentifully in Gravelly, Stony, and Sandy Land:
great Beechen-woods I have seen on the driest, barren sandy Lands: they
delight on the sides and tops of high Hills, and chalky Mountains: they will
strangely insinuate their Roots into the bowels of those seemingly
impenetrable places.—Systema Agriculture, 1675.

BEECH

BEECH III

The roots of the beech extend far and wide, but are
always rather near to the surface of the ground, so that
when a forest giant is uprooted in a heavy gale one is
surprised at the great bulk of root that is torn up, and
the very flattened mass that it presents, the whole being
a great disk of roots and earth, yards in diameter, and yet
scarcely a yard in depth. One result of this large mass
of roots so near to the surface is that scarcely anything
will grow beneath a beech-tree, further reasons for this
very marked absence of vegetation being the dense shade,
and the thick carpet of fallen leaves.

The leaves of the beech are arranged, as our illustration,
Plate XVI., shows, singly on the stem. They are ovate in
form, having their outlines wavy, and fringed in their
younger days with delicate hairs. They are also very
deeply veined, strong lines, as we see, passing from mid-rib
to margin. Throughout the summer they are a strong rich
green in colour, but in the Autumn this changes to a deep
orange-red The Autumnal beauty of all other trees fades
before the glowing splendour, the gold and amber of
the beech; and to see on some glorious September day
the woods aflame is a revelation ; the trees attired in this
robe of glowing colour, the thick carpeting of leaves
beneath them purple in the shadow and pure golden-orange
in the sunshine. We have enjoyed many such days in the
great beech forest of Savernake, and the memory of them
endures. On such occasions a colour box is a mockery,
for no pigment of man’s devising can touch the splendour
of the scene.

The foliage is sometimes riddled with holes by a species
of weevil, but comparatively few insects attack it as com-

112 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

pared with most other trees, and notably the oak. While
the entomologist finds but little spoil in the beech woods,
the fungologist gathers a rich harvest of quaint and in-
teresting forms. The leaves of the beech decay very
slowly, and were formerly both in England and on
the Continent in great repute for stuffing beds with,
as they continue sweet and elastic for many years. Their
use for this purpose extends back many centuries, for
we find Juvenal and other classic writers singing their
praises.

The smooth trunk of the beech is another very char-
acteristic feature. It is of a general olive-grey in tint, but
richly mottled with silvery-grey and golden lichens, and its
base is clothed with large patches of deep green moss of
velvet-like softness. This smooth surface of the beech
trunk has proved an irresistible temptation from the
beginning of Time for the wandering lover to carve thereon
the name of his beloved, or the wandering individual, free
from this pre-occupation, to place thereon his own.

Ovid tells us how the faithless Paris, summoned from
tending his sheep on the slopes of Mount Ida to the
perilous task of adjudging the palm of beauty between
three rival Goddesses, is bribed by Venus to declare in
her favour by the promise that he shall have to wife the
fairest woman in the whole world. Captivated, infatuated,
in the presence of the glorious Helen he, alas! utterly
forgets honour and the just claims of sweet Cénone, the
once well-beloved, and so she writes to her errant lover
an epistle of touching tenderness to recall to his mind
the happy days of old, reminding him that “the beeches
still preserve my name, and CEnone the work of your

BEECH 113

hands’ is read upon their bark, testimonies of my just
claim upon your affection.” The appeal is in vain, and the
flames of burning Troy cast a lurid light on the story.

Shakespeare does not absolutely tell us in 4s you Like
It that the trees were beech, but the speech of Jaques,
“[ pray you, mar no more trees with writing love-songs
on their barks,” indicates that these effusions were of
considerable length, and we may well assume that so
experienced a hand would appreciate the special merits
of the beech over all other trees for his purpose.

“The quaint old author of 4dam in Eden tells us that
the Beech Tree delighteth to grow in some places
more than in other: for, as in the Chiltern County, no
word is more familiar; so in others not far from it, a
Beech Tree is a great rarity, as in Oxfordshire, where
there is one growing between Oxford and Banbury, which
is so famous that it is noted over all the County, and
called the Beechen Tree, there being scarcely a Traveller
that goes by that way but takes special notice of it, yea,
formerly many went to it (though it be somewhat out of
the way), to cut their names upon its smooth bark, so
that now it is so full of letters that there is hardly any
space left.”

The flowers of the beech are moncecious, the stamen-
bearing flowers being in globose catkins of about a dozen

1 The tending of sheep would appear to be a calm pursuit lending itself
very readily to thoughts of the absent fair one. We quote another
illustration :

But oft, when ynderneathe the greene wood shade,

Her flocks lay hid from Pheebus scorching raies,

Vnto her knight she songs and sonnets made,

And them engrau’d in barke and beeche and baies.
FairFax.— Godfrey of Boulogne. Book VII., St. 19.

8

114 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

flowers each and pendant on slender drooping stems, while
the pistil bearers, on a short erect stem, are generally only
two together and within a globular mass of small and
narrow scales that ultimately develop into the prickly husk
that, as we see in our drawing, presently opens into four
lobes and thus liberates the fruit. In the upper part of
our illustration we see this husk just preparing to open,
and in the lower it is fully extended. This illustration
was made, we see by our diary, on October 11th. As the
fertile flowers are normally in pairs, the nuts, too, are in
pairs.

The fruit, known as beech-nut, or beech-mast, is
very sharply three-sided, and contains a sweet, oleaginous
kernel. In the lower part of our drawing we have
given two views of one of these nuts. They are fairly
palatable. It is said that if “eaten in great quantities
they occasion headaches and giddiness,” but one cannot
imagine any one indulging to this extent. They have
been sometimes dried and ground into meal for bread,
but their great popularity is found not in this direction
at all, but as the eagerly sought food of deer, pigs, badgers,
squirrels, dormice, ring-doves, pigeons, pheasants, and
other creatures that hold in the time of mast harvest high
festival.” An oil, that is said to equal in flavour the best
olive oil, with the great advantage of keeping longer
without becoming rancid, is obtained by pressure in

1 The beech, of oily nuts prolific— Zhe Task. COowPeER.

2 With these kernels mice and squirrels are greatly delighted, who do
mightily encrease by feeding thereon: Swine also be fatned herewith and
certaine other beasts: also Deere do feed thereon very greedily: they be
likewise pleasant to Thrushes and Pigeons.—Zhe Historie of Plantes.
GERARD,

HORNBEAM 115

France and elsewhere on the Continent: the nuts when
crushed are still very acceptable to oxen and poultry.
An attempt, about a century ago, was unsuccessfully made
to introduce the manufacture of this oil into England,
and in the reign of George I. a patent was issued for
the making of butter from beech-nuts. They have also
been roasted as a substitute for coffee.

HORNBEAM (Carrinus BEtutus)

On hard clay soils we may often find a tree, the
Hornbeam, having foliage somewhat like that of the beech,
more elongated and having serrate edges, but having a similar
regularity, sharpness, and parallelism of line in the veining.
Its timber is particularly hard and tough, close-grained,
and white in colour. It is freely used in turnery, the
making of pulleys, and the like, and appears from time
immemorial to have been fashioned into ox-yokes, hence
its name Carpinas, this being derived from the Celtic
words car and pin, meaning wood and head. Another old
name for the tree is the Yoke-elm. Hornbeam, some would
tell us, is the beam or yoke used with horned cattle, while
others would have it that the wood is so hard and dense
that beams cut from it are really more like horn than
timber. This latter explanation does not strike one as
being very satisfactory—nor indeed does the former—but
it is entitled to such little support as another of its old
names, hardbeam, can afford.

The flowering arrangements are of the moncecious type,
the male catkins being cylindrical, and some one and a half
inches long ; the flowers, of some five to twelve stamens

116 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

each, being surrounded by large, round, yellowish scales ;
while the pistillate blossoms are in slender lax catkins, often
several inches long. These are conspicuous from the long,
foliaceous, three-lobed floral leaves that envelope the flowers.
These catkins and the leaves appear together in April
or May.

The nuts are small, and very prominently ribbed ; they
will be found at the bases of the floral leaves, and ripen
about September. These floral leaves grow larger and
become yet more conspicuous as the fruit within their
shelter ripens.

The hornbeam would, under favourable circumstances,
attain to a height of some forty feet, but it bears chopping
very well, and is often found severely pollarded in con-
sequence. As one goes to Burnham Beeches to see the
most picturesque pollarded beech-trees, so in Epping Forest
one may find hundreds of the most picturesque hornbeams,
pollarded for firewood and poles, by those having forestral
rights of “lop and top,” or possibly sometimes by those
not possessing them.

SCOTCH PINE (Pinus Sy vestris)

We pass on from the glowing beech woods of the
South to the great sombre pine forests of the North, and
the transition is a very striking one. Our illustration,
Plate XVII., presents to us the foliage and cones of the tree
that is best known as the Scotch Fir, though technically
it is a pine, and botanically it is the Pinus Sylvestris. This
word pine or pinus is derived from the Celtic pin or pen,
a head, the reference being to the growth up to two

SCOTCH PINE

SCOTCH PINE 117

thousand feet above the sea of the tree on the great
mountain headlands

The Scotch pine is indigenous to Scotland, and is more
or less naturalised throughout England, appearing thoroughly
at home, for instance, on the great moorland tracts of
Hampshire and Dorsetshire, though it does not attain
there to the grand dimensions and noble growth it reaches
in its northern home. In Scotland one finds vast natural
forests of it, and it is only here in the midst of the grand
mountain scenery that one realises to the full its wild
and picturesque beauty, as it stands “ moored in the rifted
rock”’ and in situations often quite inaccessible to the human
foot. To view it rising from a well kept lawn, and
surrounded by calceolarias at its feet in a Bournemouth
pleasaunce, is barely sufficient to justify one in saying
that he has really seen a Scotch pine at all.

The tree is widely distributed over Northern Europe,
in Norway, Sweden, and Lapland, and in Russian Asia,
everywhere forming dense forests. It would appear
to flourish best on granite or on dry sand. It is
commercially a most valuable tree, as besides its immense
value for timber for building operations, it yields tar,
pitch, and turpentine. Its durability as timber is
proved to be scarcely less than that of the oak, and
it has a great power of resisting water-action. Divers
descending to the wreck of the Rgyal George found this
wood less destroyed by water and the assaults of various
sea-creatures than any other, and the Stadthuis at
Amsterdam rises securely from its watery bed, sustained
by over thirteen thousand fir-wood piles. As a fuel it
kindles rapidly and burns with a great heat, but gives a

118 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

good deal of unpleasant black smoke, features that its
resinous nature would lead us to anticipate.

The; Scotch pine rises high into the air and has but
few lateral branches. The flat-topped mass of foliage
throws a strong shade, the ground is carpeted with
the dead leaves that, brown and dry, are strewn around,
while the air is fragrant, and especially in the warm sunshine,
with the aromatic odour given forth. The stillness in a
pine forest may often be so profound that a sense of
awe creeps over us; loud talking seems a profanation,
and we may hear distinctly the patter of the squirrel’s
feet as he scampers up a trunk some trees away from
the intruders upon his domain. At other times the wind,
unfelt below, makes a subdued and solemn murmuring
amongst the tree-tops. Wordsworth, ever open to Nature-
observation, ever in sympathy with every phase of Nature-
charm tells how

At every impulse of the moving breeze
The fir-grove murmurs with a sea-like sound.

His comparison is a very apt one, the soothing, slumbrous
sound being very suggestive of the breaking of the surf on
a distant beach.

The trunks, eighty to a hundred feet high, are
enwrapped in a rough red bark that scales off in large
thin patches. A group of Scotch pines at sunset, when the
last warm rays are striking upon their rugged trunks,
turning them into glowing crimson, is wonderfully striking.
Where the trees are more or less isolated, having plenty of
light and air, they branch near the ground, but when, as
is ordinarily the case, they are part of a thick forest their

SCOTCH PINE 119

trunks go cleanly up until near the top of the tree, when
the branches are given off, almost or quite horizontal
in their general direction, and greatly gnarled and twisted
into wild picturesqueness. Under favourable conditions
the tree may go on increasing in bulk for a hundred and
fifty years, and last in good trim for yet another hundred
after that.

The leaves of the Scotch pine are in pairs, each of these
couples being surrounded at its base by a wrapping of
short, dry scales. The leaves, sometimes happily called
“needles,” are long, narrow, and rigid. They are ever-
green, and remain for two or three years on the branches.
They then turn brown and fall to the ground, remaining
unchanged for a considerable time, and forming a thick
layer. This mass of dry dead leaves and the shade cast
by the spreading mass of foliage overhead, combine to
cause that absence of other vegetation that is so striking.
In an ordinary wood one often finds the trees being
ascended by ivy or enwrapped with hop, or traveller’s
joy, or honeysuckle, and in the sweet Springtime the
new-born primroses, in all their delicate beauty are nestling
everywhere, the white anemone stars are in profusion,
and the hyacinths beneath the trees are one great sheet
of purple splendour, while, later on, other plants take
their place. The fir woods alone are unchanging : above
is ever the same evergreen canopy, and beneath ever
the same brown carpeting. April, July, November, all
are as one, except that in the Autumn one find sometimes
a considerable amount of varied fungus-growth.

The Scotch pine is yet another example, of which we
have had several already, of moncecious growth. The

120 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

staminate flowers are in small compact catkins, having two
anthers on the inside of each scale, and these discharge an
abundance of sulphur-coloured pollen. These catkins
are from half an inch to an inch long. The pistillate
flowers are in short many-flowered cones. These cones
are covered with closely imbricated scales’ that presently
dry and harden until they become woody. Each of
these scales, except a few of the lowest, covers and protects
two winged seeds at its base, the wings being some two
or three times as long as the seeds, and aiding in their
distribution. The cones are green or purplish-green at
first, but by July they attain their full size and become
brown in colour ; these remain on the tree for a consider-
able time, though the seeds are discharged from them in the
following Spring. These cones, when they do eventually
fall, remain, like the leaves, long unchanged on the ground ;
if collected they make very good firing material. The
flowering stage is in May and June, but the fruit does
not mature until July twelvemonth. In our drawing it
will be observed that one cone is small, immature, closed ;
another is larger and preparing to open ; while the third,
and lowest, shows the woody scales fully expanded and the
seeds dispersed.

The Scotch pine had a goodlier string of ‘ vertues”
attached to it by the old herbalists than its sombre foliage,
rugged bark, and woody cones would quite suggest. We
see, for instance, that “if at any time any one should
wittingly or unwittingly take Henbane and be distempered

1 We have striven to avoid the use, as far as may be, of technical terms,
but this one, “imbricated,” describes the matter so entirely that we are
constrained to use it. It is from the Latin zmbrex, a tile, and exactly brings
before us the picture of the scales all overlapping, like tiles on a roof.

SCOTCH PINE I2I

thereby, the Remedy is to drink Goat’s Milk, Honeyed
Water, or Pine Kernels with Sweet Wine. These do all
help to free them from danger, or restore them to their
right temper again.” It is interesting to see that whether
the case be one of suicide or mere carelessness, the pine
kernels are equally willing to do their best for the
sufferer. Another old writer declares that “the woody
scales whereof the Pine Apple is composed and wherein
the Kernels lie, do very much resemble the foremost teeth
of a Man; and therefore Pine leaves boyled in Vinegar
make a good decoction to gargle the mouth for asswaging
immediate pains in the teeth and gums.” Another ancient
prescription teaches how to distil a water from the young
green cones for the removal of one’s wrinkles. Yet another
venerable author discourses with enthusiasm on this tree, and
advises us that “the whole Cone or Apple being boyled
with fresh Horehound til the decoction become to the
thicknesse of Hony maketh an excellent medicine for the
clensing of the chest.” Linnzus states that in Siberia
the Pine buds, given in decoction with milk, whey, wine, or
beer, are believed in as a remedy for scurvy ; and we need
scarcely remind our readers what faith our grandfathers had
in tar-water. One old author, Thomas Bartolinus, pro-
tests against the use of hops in beer as “pernicious and
malignant,” declares they induce plague and other evils,
and recommends in their stead “shavings of deal boards
to give a grateful odour to the drink.” Coles, in 1657,
would have us add fir-cones to our dessert, declaring that
they “are wholsom and much nourishing, whilst they are
fresh, and although they be somwhat hard of digestion
yet they do not offend : especially if they be steeped three

122 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

or four hours in warm water before the taking, to soak out
their sharpnesse and oylinesse.” A” very good way, we
fancy, to save these for any connoisseur who preferred them
would be to place a dish of greengages or grapes by them
as a counter-attraction.

LARCH (Larix Europa)

Another very common cone-bearer is the Larch, Larix
europea, not an indigenous tree at all, having been
only introduced into England somewhere about 1620.
Parkinson, in 1629, mentions it as rare and nursed up
with a few, and those only lovers of variety, but now more
extensively planted than perhaps any other. It flourishes
best on high ground, being found in the Alps, Apennines,
and other European mountain regions up to an altitude
of some five thousand feet, and it will in the Scottish
Highlands do well a thousand feet higher than even the
Scotch fir will thrive at.

In the year 1727 the then Duke of Atholl received a
consignment of young orange and other plants from Italy,
and amongst them some larch. All were put into a hothouse,
but the young larches did so badly under this treatment
that they were presently thrown out on to the rubbish
heap. Here they quickly revived, grew rapidly, throve
vigorously,’ and attracted attention, the outcome being that
as Duke succeeded Duke, each added to the ancestral
woods, so that by 1830 over fourteen millions of larches
had been planted. 1,102,367 were planted in the Spring

1 In the Atholl woods, nine hundred feet above the sea some Scotch pines

that had been planted forty years were six feet high, and some larches
that had been planted amongst them ten years later were fifty feet high.

LARCH 123

of 1820, and they had previously been planted for some
time at the rate of two hundred thousand a year. The
first British war vessel built of larch was the 36-gun
frigate, the Atholl, laid down at Woolwich in 1819, the
whole of the timber employed in its construction coming
from the Atholl woods.

The larch is now found all over Britain, and will grow
on almost any soil, no matter how poor, if not absolutely
arid or a mere swamp. It reaches ordinarily a height of
about a hundred feet, though sometimes considerably more,
and may have a diameter at base of nearly five feet. Larch
timber is in great request for its toughness and durability.
From its bitter, resinous nature worms will not touch it;
it does not warp or split, and it will take a fine polish.
Before the employment of canvas larch was much used by
the older painters, Raffaelle’s “ Transfiguration” and many
other fine works being painted on larch-board. The value
of the tree was well known to the Romans, its timber
being commended by Pliny, Vitruvius, and other writers.
It was called by them Jarix, hence its botanical name.
Venice stands largely upon piles of larch.

The larch throws up an erect central trunk, the lateral
branches being nearly horizontal, and diminishing in size
upwards, so that the tree is of tapering form. It is the
only cone-bearing tree that sheds its leaves each Autumn ;
all others are evergreen. It is, therefore, not broken down
by weight of snow, and seldom affected by boisterous wintry
gales. It comes into leaf in April, the foliage being of a
particularly vivid green. One enthusiastic writer describes
the tree as then ‘‘a pyramid of beryl,” while another writes
of ‘its emerald glory.” Another calls the foliage “a lively

124 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

pea-green,” while yet one more, and he of much more
prosaic mould, declares the colour raw and crude, and out
of harmony with its surroundings. The leaves are in
small bunches, looking like little tufts of grass along the
stems, each leaf being about an inch long.

The larch is moneecious, developing its flowers in April.
The stamen-bearers are in little yellow spherical clusters,
adherent to the branches; while the pistillate flowers are
in ovate cones, an inch or so in length, and borne erect
upon footstalks. The cones, when young, are of a very
pleasing pink and purple colour, and ultimately turn brown
and woody ; remaining, as we have seen in the Scotch
pine, on the boughs in this hardened condition long after
the seeds are dispersed. The scales have their edges turned
outwards, and have at their base the ovate seed, half
surrounded by its broad membranous wing.

SPANISH CHESTNUT (Castanea Vesca)

The Spanish Chestnut, Castanea vesca. Botanical autho-
rities appear to have decided that this tree is not really a
native of these islands, and one great reason for their belief,
and it is not at all a bad reason, is that it does not often fully
ripen its fruit here, as we might expect an aboriginal to do ;
and they declare that it was introduced by the Romans.
As they were in possession here for some four hundred years,
it is very natural to assume that they would bring hither
the hardier kinds of trees, and especially those that in their
native country they valued as producers of food. Tradition
hath it that the tree was brought to Rome from Asia
Minor by the Emperor Tiberius, and that it thence quickly

SPANISH CHESTNUT

SPANISH CHESTNUT 125

spread over Southern and Western Europe. It, at all
events, centuries ago, made itself thoroughly at home in
our midst, though we do not find it, except in parks, hedges,
or copses where it has obviously been planted by man.
It appears to do best on a deep sandy loam. It forms
great natural forests in the south of Europe, and the
reason that we call it in England the Spanish chestnut
is because enormous quantities of its fruit are yearly im-
ported to our shores from Spain.

Some botanical and philological experts tell us that
the tree derives its botanical name from the little town
of Castanea in Thessaly, where it is said to have been
especially in evidence, but other authorities turn the matter
the other way round and declare that it was this multitude
of trees that gave its name to the town. In Welsh it
is the Castan-wydden, in French chdtaignier, in German
Kastanien, in Spanish Castana, in Russian Keshtann, in
Swedish Kastanje, the Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, and
Danish names being all of very similar nature to these.'

The Spanish chestnut, when well grown, forms a very
noble tree, equalling even the oak in picturesqueness and
rugged beauty in its noble trunk and grand ramification.
Its massive branches are thrown boldly out nearly hori-
zontally from the trunk, and at times sweep down to the
ground. It is a tree that Salvator Rosa loved to paint :
though to him it was not the stately adornment of some
well-kept English park, but at home, in all the wild

1 It is very curious and unusual to find such a sameness in plant names
used in different countries. There is ordinarily much more diversity; the
tree, for instance, that we call oak is to the Frenchman chéne, to the Italian

quercia, to the Spaniard vod/e, to the Portuguese carvalho, and to the
German eiche.

126 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

grandeur of its native growth, in the midst of savage
mountain environment.

Londoners may see some very good chestnut trees in
Kensington Gardens, in Greenwich Park, and in Kew
Gardens. In this latter spot we were watching a number
of boys hunting under the trees for the fallen chestnuts,
when we heard another onlooker tell his companion that
these busy seekers were “‘after mulberries,” which remark
seems almost in itself, if the idea be at all common that
chestnut trees yield mulberries, a justification for our book.?

Many fine chestnuts are to be found scattered over
the country, in the Forest of Dean, Enfield Chace, Cowdray
Park, Petworth, Burgate, Cobham, Nettlecombe, and else-
where. At Tortworth, in Gloucestershire, is a chestnut
that, now little more than a ruin, had, at four feet from
the ground, a circumference of fifty-one feet. It is known
to have been standing there in the year 1150, and was
even then so fine a tree that it was called “the great
chestnut.” It was a boundary mark between two manors,
and is mentioned in deeds of Kings John and Stephen.
As young inconspicuous trees are scarcely raised to the
dignity of boundary marks, it may well have been standing
there a century before, while tradition carries it back yet
further.

The leaves of the Spanish chestnut are of a deep, glossy
green, strongly veined, and having a much indented margin.
Their general character may be seen depicted in our
eighteenth illustration. They are often eight or nine

1 On pointing out to a friend amongst some ruins in the environs of Rome
a rather specially fine plant of fennel, a man who happened to be within
earshot turned to us and said, ‘‘ Don’t you know what it is? That is the
hemlock that Socrates was poisoned with!”

SPANISH CHESTNUT 127

inches long, and in the Autumn are very varied and rich
in colour. Few creatures care for them, but amongst these
few may be mentioned the caterpillars of the common, but
curiously marked, buff-tip moth.

The flowers are moneecious in arrangement and should
be sought for in May. The barren flowers are exceedingly
numerous and arranged in little clusters along a very long
stem. The stamens of each little flower of the cluster
stand boldly out and form a conspicuous feature. These
spikes of stamen-bearing flowers may be seen in a now
withered state in our figure. The pistillate flowers are
much fewer in number and are usually in groups of three
within a leafy, four-lobed cup of bracts, or involucre. The
odour of the flowers is powerful and peculiar, and to some
persons very disagreeable.

The nuts, singly or in pairs, are within the enlarged
prickly involucre.t In our illustration one of these spiny
protecting balls is yet closed, while the other is opening
and showing within it the fruit. The nut is not round
like an acorn, but flat on one side for greater convenience
of packing.

These nuts, though plentifully produced, do not
ordinarily come to maturity in England, though Shakespeare
in various passages refers to them as an article of food.
Deer are very fond of them, as also are mice, squirrels,
and divers other creatures. Abroad they are largely used
as a table vegetable, and even as a substitute for bread,
but then the foreign chestnuts it must not be forgotten,
are much better than anything of the sort that we can grow.

' The fruit is inclosed in round and rough and pricklie huske like to
an hedge-hog or vrchin, which opening itselfe doth let fall the ripe fruit.

128 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

Ground up’ and mixed with a little milk and salt, to which
the more extravagant may add an egg and some butter,
a very palatable cake is produced, while polenta, a very
popular South?: European dish, may be made by boiling
chestnut-flour in milk until it becomes thick. Another
preparation one may come across is chatigna, which is
merely chestnuts boiled, mashed, and seasoned ; while the
joy of roasting chestnuts on the bars no Briton can
surely be oblivious to, and it is an interesting touch
of our kinship in experience with the past to find an author,
some three hundred years ago, warning his readers that
“ unlesse the shell be first cut the chestnuts skip suddenly
with a cracke out of the fire whilst they be rosting.”

The edible or Spanish chestnut generally bears its fruits
in bunches of two or three, or, more rarely, in clusters of
four, but we have known of a cluster gathered in the
New Forest that consisted of fifteen, the largest being
about an inch in their greatest diameter. This was, of

course, very abnormal.

HORSE CHESTNUT (4¢scutus Hiprocastanum)

The Spanish chestnut naturally suggests to us the
horse chestnut, of which a representation, in its fruiting
stage, is given in our nineteenth illustration. It is
botanically the #sculus Hippocastanum. ‘The resemblance
between the two chestnuts is one of popular name only ;
they are botanically entirely distinct. The generic name
is from esca, food, while the specific name is a compound
signifying horse and chestnut. It was also, by the older
writers, called Castanea equina, from the resemblance of

HORSE CHESTNUT

HORSE CHESTNUT 129

the fruit to that of the chestnut. Why it should be at all
identified with a horse opens up a question. Some will tell
us that it is because the fruit is given to horses, while others
remind us that where a plant somewhat resembles another,
but is coarser and larger in growth, it sometimes gets
“horse” as a prefix to its name, horse-mint and_horse-
radish being examples of this. The foliage of the horse
chestnut is larger and more massive-looking than that of
the Spanish chestnut, but yet one could scarcely speak
of the one tree as being a coarse version of the other.
The claims of the horse chestnut to a place in our
book are painfully slight, as it has not been known in
England three hundred years ; still, it is now so common
and so well known that it could scarcely be denied mention.
It was brought from Central Asia, about the year 1550,
to Constantinople, and thence spread over Europe. We
find that Gerard, writing in the year 1597, says, “the horse-
chestnut groweth in Italie, and in sundry places of the

b

East countries”; but in his edition of 1633 we are told

“it is now growing with Mr. Tradescant at South
Lambeth.”

Its chief claim to a place in our regard is its ornamental
character, as neither its fruit nor its timber are of any
service, the nuts being bitter and uneatable, the wood
soft, spongy, and lacking durability. The tree grows very
rapidly, and, bearing a very ample and dense mass of
foliage, may be used to ensure privacy, to screen off
unsightly surroundings, or to form an excellent shade
for horses and cattle.

The leaves are of a character quite unlike those of
any other of our trees, though they are curiously like, on

g

130 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

a greatly enlarged scale, those of the little cinquefoil, the
Potentilla reptans. They are composed of five or seven
leaflets, spreading like the rays of a fan, the central leaflet
being the largest, and the others diminishing in beautiful
gradation. In early Autumn they change from green to
a rich reddish-brown, and are one of the earliest leaves
to fall. From their number and size they strew the
ground thickly, and invite prompt removal if scattered
on meadow or roadway. They have, moreover, a striking
way of coming down almost simultaneously, so that in
less than a week the tree, so lately a mass of ruddy foliage,
has become but bare branches.

The flowers are very attractive either singly or col-
lectively, the ivory-white petals, with their quaintly waved
and crumpled margins, being delicately tinted in their
centres with yellow and pink, and the whole mass forming
a very graceful hyacinth-like cone of blossoms. These
expand in May, and are ordinarily in great profusion ;
being found at the ends of the branches, they are very
much in evidence. So soon as the flowers are fallen the
tree bethinks itself of next year, and the buds develop
and continue swelling until the Autumn. They are then
overspread with a very tenacious, protective varnish, and
so continue until, at the first hint of genial Spring weather,
the enclosing scales are unwrapped and thrown aside, and
in a few days the tree has wholly discarded its wintry
appearance and stands revealed before us fully clothed
in verdant beauty.

In the lower portion of our illustration, Plate XIX., we
have depicted the nut ensconced in its green and prickly
shell ; the upper case has not yet split open. The nut

BIRCH 131

is roundish in form, of deep reddish-brown colour, and
of a very polished exterior. If the nuts be cut up and
mixed with bran or oats, they may be given to horses,
but, while they contain much farinaceous and nutritive
matter, there is an astringency in the raw state that is
a drawback to their use. When deprived of this by
maceration and boiling, cattle, sheep, and poultry will eat
them, but pigs decline them in any form.

In France and Switzerland they are used for bleaching
yarn and cleansing woollens, and a paste for paper-hangers,
book-binders, etc., may be prepared from them. In 1796
a patent was granted to Lord Murray for a method of
extracting starch, but the practical outcome of the whole
matter, we fancy, may be summed up by affirming that,
when all is said and done, the fruit of the horse chestnut
is of very little economic value.

BIRCH (Beruta Axsa)

The Birch, the most charming, perhaps, of all our forest
trees, occurs abundantly in the North, where it may be
considered to be truly indigenous, thriving on the most
barren and rocky soils, and growing luxuriantly under the
hardest conditions. It may be found plentifully, too, in our
milder southern shires, prospering on sandy commons, and
on land that will grow little else but heather, but in these
latter circumstances, graceful and charming as it is, it appears
to lack something of the beauty that contrast gives, and
which is felt so strongly amidst the savage grandeur of
its surroundings in “ Caledonia, stern and wild.”

132 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

In spite of the delicate lightness of its appearance,
for Coleridge calls it in happy appropriateness—

Most beautiful
Of forest trees, the Lady of the Woods,

it is pre-eminently a tree of the rugged uplands and
bleak mountain slopes, being found in Scotland up to an
altitude of three thousand five hundred feet above the
sea, a much higher level than that attained by any other
tree, companioning us as we ascend the loftier heights long
after we have left the Scotch pine behind us. In the
Apennines it reaches six thousand feet, while in the icy
North it approaches nearer the polar regions than any other
tree, and is the only tree found in Greenland at all.

In Anglo-Saxon plant lists it is the birc, birce, beorc,
or dyrc, while in Holland it is the derke, in Denmark the
birk, and in Germany the dirke. It is suggested that these
names are all derived from the verb drechen, to brighten,
and that the allusion is to the brilliant silvery whiteness of
the bark. “It showeth wondrous white,” saith Holland.?
Wordsworth, in his description of an evening walk at
Winandermere writes—

How pleasant, as the yellowing sun declines,

And with long rays and shades the landscape shines,
To mark the birch’s stems all golden light,

That lit the dark slant woods with silvery white.

And the same feature, the whiteness of the trunk, strikes
the eye of Keats, who writes of—

The silvery stems
Of delicate birch-trees.

‘An English translation of Pliny’s Natural History, a book written in the
first century of our era, was made by Philemon Holland in the reign of
Queen Elizabeth. Our quotation is Holland’s apt rendering of Pliny’s strong
expression, mirabilis candor.

BIRCH 133

It is also suggested that the tree derives its name from the
Anglo-Saxon Jdeorcan, to bark, to strip the bark from a
tree, since this bark of gleaming whiteness is the first feature
to catch the eye, and in early days was of great utility
in boat-building, roofing, and other necessary purposes.

The books written by Numa, some seven hundred years
before the Christian era, were inscribed on birch-bark. He
ordered that at his death his body should not be cremated,
but interred, and that in his tomb should be placed with
him the books that he had written. On his tomb being
opened four hundred years after, these writings were found
to be in perfect condition. They were carefully read, and as
it was found that they were not in harmony with the ideas,
religious and political, of the day, it was decreed that they
should be destroyed, and they were forthwith solemnly
consigned to the flames. If, instead of being discovered
some three hundred years before the Christian era, they
had been brought to light some nineteen hundred years
after it, what would not archeologists have given for such
a treasure?

The trunk of the birch in ascending is often somewhat
sinuous ; it has not the stiff rigidity of the larch, for
instance, and at some little distance from the ground,
divides into numerous branches, more or less flexible and
pendant at their extremities. The tree would ordinarily
be about eighty feet in height, though exceptional specimens
considerably overtop this, while a Greenland or Lapp birch
is, under the stress of Arctic conditions, but three or four
feet, or even less, in height.

1 We recall walking at some considerable elevation in Switzerland through
a pine forest, the trees reaching to our knees.

134 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

We may at times see amidst the branches great masses
of small twigs that suggest at once the idea of large nests,
a rookery possibly, some trees having a dozen or so of
them. These are popularly called witches’ knots. They
are, however, neither the work of witches nor of rooks,
but a case of arrested natural development of the stems
caused by the proceedings of a minute gall-mite.

The leaves of the birch are small, arranged singly on
the stems, broadly ovate in form, and having their margins
cut like the teeth of a saw. Reference to Plate XX. will
show their general growth and character. In Autumn they
change to a clear, bright yellow-brown tint. Where the
conditions of: life are hard they are used as fodder for
horses, cattle, sheep, and goats, and, under the same
conditions, are employed as a substitute for tea.

The flowering arrangements are of the moncecious type.
The pollen-bearing catkins are borne at the ends of the
last year’s shoots, and are generally very numerous, and,
from their position, conspicuous. While they are not mature
until April, they may be seen developing months before.
Though not uncommonly three may be found grouped
together, they are more ordinarily in twos. In the earlier
days they are stiff, erect, about an inch long, and very
suggestive of the letter V as they spring from the stem
in pairs; later on they elongate to two inches or so,
becoming slender and pendulous. They are covered with
scales, these scales protecting flowers having from eight
to twelve stamens. The pistillate flowers are in shorter
and denser catkins composed of three-lobed scales, each
of which shields three flowers. The fruits that succeed
these are of flattened form, and furnished with a broad,

BIRCH 135

flat, membranous wing surrounding them. This wing
is Nature’s provision for their dispersal, the broad _plate-
like form being admirably adapted for this. These little
fruits are produced in great profusion and form a very
welcome food, and especially in high latitudes, to many
species of birds, such as the black grouse and ptarmigan.
The siskin is particularly partial to them, and may be seen
diligently investigating the catkins in search of them.
The sweetness of the sap that exudes so freely from the
birch renders it very attractive to various kinds of insect
life, and a knowledge of this fact is of great value to the
entomologist, who is careful to keep an eye upon any of
these trees that he may find. The sap undergoes some little
fermentation, and butterflies, wasps, and other insects succumb
to the temptation. Inebriation is the result, and those that
take part in this debauch become often so hopelessly
incapable that they can be easily picked off by the hand
from the stems or from the surrounding rocks or herbage.
Peacock butterflies and red admirals are generally the
most numerous. The very rare Camberwell beauty is
also one of the species that yield to this temptation and
fall, willing victims, into a state of shocking intemperance.
Economically the birch is of much value, and especially
in those sterile lands where it flourishes so well and where
so much else is wanting. Its timber supplies fencing,
flooring, barrels, and many other useful things ; its bark
is moulded into the canoe, or forms the shingles of the hut,
its larger branches yield welcome fuel, and its smaller ones,
twisted together, serve as cordage. Its sap yields a welcome
beverage,’ and the fragrant and insect-resisting Russian

1 Holes are made in the trunk in the beginning of March, a large tree

136 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

leather owes both these qualities to its preparation with
birch oil. Furniture, wooden shoes, brooms, are other
needs that the birch is equal to supplying, nor must we
overlook its value as a stimulus to learning and correct
conduct. This, in fact, is placed first by Coles in his Paradise
of Plants. We declares that “the civill uses whereunto
the birch tree serveth are many; as, for the punishment
of children, both at home and at school; for it hath an
excellent influence upon them, to quiet them when they
are out of order; and therefore some call it Make-peace.”
Shakespeare warns us how fond fathers, not sufficiently
zealous in applying “the threatening twigs of birch,” find
in time “the rod more mocked than feared’; while
Shenstone, in his charming poem of the “ Village School-
mistress,” tells how a birchen-tree doth rise hard by the
little home of learning, and how, as its branches waved
in the breeze, the pupils shuddered—

”

And as they look’d, they found their horror grew,
And shaped it into rods, and tingled at the view.!

ASH (Fraxinus Excetsior)

Gilpin, while he calls the oak the Hercules of the woods,
ascribes to the ash the position. of Venus. The idea is
forced and fanciful, but we at least accept it as a testimony

bearing tapping in four or five places and being none the worse for it. A
pipe is then inserted and some sort of vessel suspended to catch the sap.
This sap is then boiled with sugar; after cooling it is put into a cask, being
drunk when it is a year old.
1 But though no more his brow severe, nor dread
Of birchen sceptre awes my riper age,
A sterner tyrant rises to my view,
With deadlier weapon arm’d.
Jaco, “ Edgehill.”

ASH 137

to the charm of the ash, which, in its elegance of form, the
lightness of its foliage, and its noble branching, is one of
the most beautiful of our forest trees. Virgil appreciatively
designates it fraxinus in sy/vis pulcherrima. It is, moreover,
after the oak, the most useful of trees, its timber having
a toughness, lightness, and elasticity of fibre that gives it
great value. It has been called by an old writer “the
husbandman’s tree,” as there is nothing equal to it for
poles, ladders, tool-handles, and such like purposes. Evelyn
says of it—“It serves the soldier, the carpenter, the wheel-
wright, cartwright, cooper, turner, and thatcher . . . from
the pike, spear, and bow to the plough ; in peace and war
it is a wood in the highest request.” Homer dwells on the
mighty ashen spear of Achilles, and the medieval pikemen
had the staves of their weapons of this wood. It has
a great power of standing sudden strain, so for weapons,
axe-hafts, and the like it has.a special value. Hence
Spencer, in his description of divers trees, “the builder
oak ; the laurel, meed of mighty conquerors ; the yew,
obedient to the bender’s will,” sums up the present tree in
the pithy comprehensive phrase—“ the ash, for nothing ill.”

We see from a passage in Norden’s Surveyor’s Dialogue,
a book published in 1607, that it was necessary in the
reign of Henry VIII. to make a Statute for the pre-
servation of certain trees that from their economic value
were becoming scarce: the oak, beech, and some few
others, and amongst these we find the ash. It was
required that “twelve storers and standils? should bee left

' Ash, far-reaching his umbrageous arms,
Cowper.

* Store trees, standing trees, so that everything should not be ruthlessly

138 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

standing at euery fall, vpon an acre.” Even in the
farmer’s own interest, Tusser, in his book on husbandry,
advises to—

Leaue growing for stadles the likest and best,

Though seller and buier dispatched the rest.

In bushes, in hedgerowe, in groue, and in wood,
This lesson obserued is needful and good.

It is curious in these latter days, when we are a
little anxious about the duration of our coal supply, to
find in Norden’s book that one great cause of the
destruction of timber was its employment as fuel for
various manufactures. Sussex, now so purely agricultural,
had, when he wrote, one hundred and forty hammers
and furnaces for the smelting of iron, consuming “ each
of them in euery 24 houres 2, 3 or foure loades
there were

?

of charrcoale,” while “in Surry adjoyning’
three thousand four hundred ‘“glasse-houses” equally
exigent.

The importation of timber from abroad to supply
our own necessities is not by any means a_ proceeding
of yesterday merely, or the day before, for we find Hartlib
lamenting, in 1659, the great dearth of home-grown
timber. He writes, “It is a great fault that generally
throughout the Island the Woods are destroyed, so that
we are in many places much necessitated for fuel and

felled. This Statute was confirmed and stiffened in the reign of Elizabeth,
but we find Harrison complaining that ‘‘ Within these fortie yeeres we
shall have little great timber growing, for it is commonlie seene that those
yong staddles which we leaue standing are vsuallie at the next sale cut
downe without any danger of the Statute, and serue for fire bote, if it
please the owner to burne.” Austin, writing in 1657, reminds the law-
makers and law-breakers of a salutary “law in Spaine, that he that cuts
downe one tree, shall plant three for it.”

ASH 139

also for timber for building and other uses, so that if
we had not Coales from New-castle and Boards from
Norwey we should be brought to great extremity, and
many Mechanickes would be necessitated to leave their
callings.”

In scientific nomenclature the ash is the FPraxinus
excelsior. The generic title, as we have seen from
the line from Virgil, is its old Latin appellation. Hence
it is still in Italy the frassino, in Spain the fresno, in
Portugal the freixo, while in France it is the fréve. Our
English name descends to us from the Anglo-Saxon esc.
It is.in Germany the esche, in Denmark the aske-tre,
and in Sweden the ask-trdd. It is curious to observe
how all the southern names spring from one derivation,
while all the northern names have another common
parentage. This double grouping is only what might
have been clearly anticipated, but it is nevertheless in-
teresting to take note of it.

One striking feature in the ash is the curiously sooty
blackness of the buds ; this characteristic alone would suffice
to identify the tree while yet leafless. It will be recalled
how Tennyson, whose Nature-touches are so numerous,
sO appreciative, so admirable, and so true, declares of one
of his heroines that her hair was blacker even than the
ash-buds of March.

The foliage of the ash is of a light and bright green
that often causes a very pleasant contrast with the
surrounding trees. The leaves are what is termed
pinnate, or feather-like, a central stem having a terminal
leaflet, and other leaflets in pairs below it. The leaves
of the ash have two great drawbacks: they appear so

140 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

late, and disappear so soon! The tree is rarely in leaf
before June, and at the first touch of frost, no matter
how early, the foliage falls rapidly, so that one may see
a tree in full and vigorous leaf, and two or three days
hence find it bare, and the pathway thickly strewn with
the fallen and blackened foliage. The ash contributes
nothing, therefore, to the splendour of colour of the woods
in Autumn.

The flowers open before the leaves, and should be
sought for in April or May. They grow in large clusters
in pairs on the stems, and are of a rich red purple. They
are particularly simple in character, having neither calyx
nor corolla, but throwing up a small stigma-tipped column,
having at its base a couple of stamens.

The fruits of the ash are popularly called keys, a name
given them from their clustering, pendent character, sugges-
tive of a bunch of keys. By some old authors they are
called Peter-keys, from the great Apostle, the bearer of the
keys, or sometimes Lingua passerina, from their supposed
resemblance in form to the tongue of a sparrow. These
clusters are abundantly produced, and each cluster consists
of many keys ; green at first, but presently turning black,
and hanging on long after the leaves have gone. The
seeds propagate freely, so that one often sees young seedlings
in abundance around the parent tree. To quote a rather
quaint phrase that describes the position admirably, ‘ the
ash possesses a considerable power of occupancy.” The
fruit is dry and at its extremity flattens out into a foliaceous
wing to assist in its dispersal, the whole arrangement being
about an inch and a half long. In the green state the keys
are sometimes pickled in vinegar and salt ; they are slightly

ASH 141

aromatic and a little bitter. After one’s first taste one is
not conscious of any special hankering after them.

The “ virtues” of the ash were held to be great. The
little shrew mouse was held in the good old times to be
of a terribly vindictive and hurtful nature, one of its
favourite recreations being to run over horses, sheep, or
cattle and paralyse them. To counteract so very objection-
able a proceeding all that was necessary when any of
the farmer’s stock was suffering was, not to send for the
“Vet,” for he was not invented in those days, but to
gently stroke the parts affected with a twig of shrew-ash.
To make shrew-ash all that was needful was to bore a
deep hole in any ash-trunk, insert alive a shrew mouse,
and, with divers mystic rites, plug the opening up again.

Pliny taught his disciples that no serpent dare come
within the shadow of an ash tree, and that if a serpent be
surrounded and penned in with ash-boughs, except where
the circle be interrupted by a fierce fire, the creature will
prefer to make its exit through this than through the fence of
ash-stems. It is wonderful how these old beliefs held their
ground for centuries, when the test of experiment would
at any time have shattered them in ten minutes. It was,
however, considerably easier for one writer after another to
repeat what their predecessors had said than to venture
on a proceeding so iconoclastic as to bring the statements
of venerated authorities to the proof. Culpeper, however,
seems to have been thus daring, for while he quotes the
statement that “ash tree leaves are good against the bitings
of serpents and vipers,” he adds, “I suppose this had its
rise from Gerrard or Pliny, both which hold that there is
such an antipathy between an adder and an Ash tree that

142 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

if an adder be encompassed round with Ash tree leaves she
will sooner run through the fire than through the leaves.”
He then proceeds to bring matters to a climax by declaring
“the contrary to which is the truth, as both mine eyes are
witnesses.” As both his eyes agreed to pronounce Pliny’s
statement erroneous he had no choice but to believe
them. ‘Three or four” leaves of the ash tree,” advises
Gerard, “taken in wine each morning from time to
time, doe make those leane that are fat, and keepeth them
from feeding which do begin to wax”; but Dioscorides
declares that a decoction made from ash-shavings is a
deadly poison.

By the early northern races the ash was regarded with
great reverence. The great ash Ydrasil, of which the
branches extended over heaven was the canopy of the
gods, and in Scandinavian theology and myth the first
created man was formed of ash-wood. To enter, however,
upon the mythology, superstition, and folk-lore that has
gathered around the ash would, if at all adequately done,
mean, not a paragraph, but a volume.

ROWAN (Pyrus Aucuparis)

The Rowan or Mountain Ash, the subject of our twenty-
first illustration, must not be at all associated with the real
ash. The name is unfortunate, and was only bestowed
upon it because of a certain similarity of form in the leaves
of the two trees. The rowan is really a close relative of
the hawthorn and apple, as its botanical name, Pyrus
Aucuparia, clearly indicates. This specific name Aucuparia
was bestowed on it because it has long been the custom

ROW Ad

ROWAN 143

for bird-catchers in Germany and elsewhere abroad to trap
redwings, field-fares, thrushes, and other birds in hair nooses
baited with rowan berries. ;

The rowan is extremely hardy, and will flourish in almost
any soil. It is really a wild mountaineer, delighting to
grow on the rocky heights, and forming, either in leaf or
in fruit, a charming contrast with the solemn pines, its
companions. It is in our own minds irrevocably associated
with the grandest mountain scenery, and we have seen it
sometimes such a mass of berries that the trees have told
as scarlet spots in the landscape. Yet this same rowan,
flourishing two thousand feet and more above sea-level, is
content to beautify the suburban garden, and give an added
grace even to villadom, though we need scarcely say that
those who have only seen it amidst such surroundings have
but a faint idea of what a rowan is really like.

The pinnate leaves are of a rather dark green colour,
and are built up of a terminal leaflet and from five to nine
pairs of laterals. The flowers are in numerous large clusters
at the ends of the branches and consequently very con-
spicuous, so that in May the tree is a mass of white
blossom. The individual flowers are small, and_five-
petalled, very hawthorn-like in character, very numerous
in each cluster, and having an odour that we might perhaps
describe as fragrant if we took the precaution of suggesting
a note of interrogation after our verdict. Some persons
will declare it delightful, while others, we have noticed,
are not prepared to allow it to be much more than peculiar.
There is great difference of opinion, one cannot help
observing, on the question of floral scents—the meadow-
sweet, for instance, to some persons amply justifies its

144 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

name by its fragrance, while others pronounce it mostly
sickly and objectionable.

The berries of the rowan are at first green, but soon
turn to a rich red. They are globular in form and, like
their sister fruits, the haws, are surmounted by the remains
of the calyx. Under favourable conditions they are very
numerous, but they are very greedily devoured by the
birds, so that a tree is often very quickly stripped of all
its ruddy fruit. The berries are harsh and austere accord-
ing to man’s standard, and he is ordinarily quite content
to leave them to the blackbirds and thrushes, but a very
pleasant preserve may be prepared from them, and the
mountaineers of Scotland make them into a kind of
cyder, or by distillation extract from them an ardent and
potent spirit.

The rowan has also, by the older writers, been called
the witchentree, a name that testifies to the belief once
held in its sovereign efficacy against enchantment and the
evil eye. A branch of it was hung up over house portals
and the doorways of stables and cowhouses, to preserve
the respective indwellers from all sorts of perils. The
dairymaid brought home her charges from the mountain
pastures by the soft persuasiveness of a rod of rowan,
and the shepherd required all his lambs to jump soon
after their birth through a hoop of rowan as a defence
against the ills before them, while all who desired to
be free from the possibilities of enchantment and witch-
craft were careful to carry about with them at all times
a small piece of this sovereign antidote.

SERVICE 145

SERVICE (Pyrus TorMinatis)

Another member of the same genus as the rowan is
the Service, Pyrus torminalis. It is only found in a really
wild state in the woods and hedges of our southern and
central English counties, and varies from a mere shrub
to a moderate sized tree, attaining to a height of about
fifty feet. It is of slow growth, and under favourable
circumstances will reach a very considerable age ; thriving
especially in chalk districts. The wood is very hard and
close of grain, and though too small in bulk for much
other service is in request for turnery.

The leaves are much like those of the hawthorn in
form, but are considerably larger, being often four inches
long and some three inches across. The young leaves are
clothed, and especially on their under-surfaces, with a
loose, grey down that presently disappears. The foliage
of the service in the Autumn becomes of a yellowish-
brown colour.

The flowers should be sought in May. They are
found in clusters at the ends of the stems, and are of a
very similar type to those of the rowan, but are somewhat
larger individually and are fewer in number in the clusters.
The berries that succeed these are of ovoid or globular
form and of brownish colour. They are exceedingly acid
and rough to the taste, but when mellowed later on by a
little frost they become softer and more mealy and almost
palatable, and in this state they are quite wholesome.
They are something like medlars in flavour and are
occasionally brought to market. “Service berries,’ quoth
Gerard, “are cold, and much more when they be hard

IO

146 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

than when they are milde and soft; in some places they are
quickly soft, either hanged in a place which is not altogether
cold, or laid in hay or chaffe. If they yeeld any nourish-
ment at all, the same is very little, grosse, and cold.” This
certainly cannot be considered much of a testimonial. He
goes on to say that “it is not expedient to eate of these
or other like fruits, nor to vse them otherwise than in
medicines,’ and he then suggests divers applications
of them, such as staunching bleeding and such like things,
where their astringency would be of possible service— if
they be cut and dried in the sunne before they be ripe,
and so reserued for vse in diuers waies according to the
manner of the greife.” The Latin name for the plant was
sorbus, and one of its old names is, in consequence, the
sorb-tree, while its fruits were dubbed sorb-apples.

SYCAMORE (Acer Psevupo-PLatanus)

It is generally accepted that the Sycamore, the subject
of Plate XXII., has no claim whatever to be considered
an indigenous tree, though the date of its introduction is
unknown. It is, nevertheless, now so widely distributed
and so thoroughly at home with us that it may fully claim
a place in our pages. Some would tell us that it was
brought from the East at the time of the Crusades, a
special value being attached to it from a belief that it was
the tree associated in the Gospel story with Zacchzus.
St. Jerome, who died in the fourth century, was shown
a tree which was claimed to be the sycamore actually
climbed by Zacchezus, but however that may have been, the
tree of the Bible narrative was not the tree known to us

SYCAMORE 147

as the sycamore, but was either a species of fig, the Ficus
sycomorus, or the black mulberry, Morus nigra. The
former tree is the one generally accepted. It is referred
to in Psalm Ixxviii., and in 1 Chronicles xxvii., by the
Hebrew words shikmim, shikmoth, but it is not at all
a common tree in Palestine; while the latter, the black
mulberry, still called sycominos in Greece, is very abundantly
found in the Holy Land, and is held by others to be
the tree referred to by St. Luke. The subject is not free
from difficulty.

The introduction of the sycamore into England can
scarcely have been so early as the days of the Crusaders,
since it is a tree that sows itself very freely, and yet we
find writers on plants centuries after the Crusades, referring
to it as a rarity. Gerard, writing his Herball in 1597,
declares that “the great Maple is a stranger in England,
only it groweth in the walks and places of pleasure of noble
men, when it specially is planted for the shadow sake, and
vnder the name of Sycomore.” Parkinson, a little later,
says, “It is nowhere found wilde or naturall in our land,
that I can tell, but only planted in orchards or walkes
for the shadowes sake.” Chaucer in The Flowre and
the Leafe, mentions it, but only as a plant under conditions
that suggest cultivation—

And so I followed till it me brought

To right a pleasaunt herber well ywrought
That benched was, and with turfes new
Freshly turned whereof the greene gras

So small, so thicke, so short, so fresh of hew
That most like vnto greene welwot it was.
The hegge also that yede in compas

And closed in all the green herbere

With Sicamour was set and eglatere.

148 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

It will be noticed in all these writers that they
speak so strongly of the shade-giving feature, but Evelyn
condemns the sycamore and declares that “it is much more
in reputation for its shade than it deserves; fur the
honey-dew leaves, which fall early, like those of the ash,
turn to mucilage and noxious insects, and putrify with
the first moisture of the season, so as they contaminate
and marr our walks, and are therefore, by my consent,
to be banished from all curious gardens and avenues.”

This tree that we call, and not quite happily, the
sycamore, is by some writers given the title of the great
maple; as we have seen, for instance, in our quotation
from Gerard. To this title no objection can be raised,
for, foreigner though the tree be, it is a near relative of
the common and indigenous maple, the Acer campestre, a
much smaller tree. The botanical name of the sycamore
is Acer pseudo-platanus. Were, again, a difficulty in nomen-
clature is suggested, for we are reminded by the specific
name pseudo-platanus, or false plane, that some folks, led
away by the similarity in form of the foliage of the two
trees, thought that the sycamore must be a kind of plane,
and so used either name as equally suitable.t In France
the Sycamore is called the fausse platane.

The growth of the sycamore is somewhat stiff. The
main boughs spring in rigid and angular fashion from the

1 Hieronymus Tragus, for instance, in his Hzstory of Plants, published in
1532, called the sycamore, #/afanus, He was a German, and his real name
was Jerome Bock. Bock signifies goat, and in accordance with the pedantic
fashion of that day, Latinising wherever possible, he became Tragus, as
the Swede, Carl von Linné, became Carolus Linnzeus. Still, when a man
wrote his treatise or book in Latin, it was only fit that his name should be
Latinised also.

SYCAMORE 149

central trunk, and lessen regularly in size towards the
top, so that we get a rather formal round-headed mass
of foliage. The leaves are of considerable size and very
numerous, so that one can quite understand its shade-giving
property being one of the first things noted. The wood
is close-grained and yet easy to work, and it was in our
forefathers’ days much used for the making of spoons,
plates, bowls and trenchers, before Birmingham and Burslem
between them supplanted wood by metal or by earthenware.
If the trunk be punctured as the tree is coming into leaf
an abundant supply of sap may be procured that can be
converted into sugar or wine. Thirty-six quarts of this
saccharine juice have been drawn from one tree within
a week.

The leaves of the sycamore are dark green on their
upper surface and whitish beneath. As the leaves are
large and on long footstalks, they move readily to the wind,
and a sudden gust very curiously reveals these light under-
surfaces. Their form is sufficiently indicated in our illus-
tration. One old writer, we see, calls them “great broad
and cornered leaves much like to those of the Vine.”
They grow in pairs, it will be noted, a very unusual
arrangement amongst our British trees, and the sharp
decision of the lines of the veining is also a very marked
feature. The young leaves are folded up fan-wise in the
buds, and when these latter once yield to the genial
influence of Spring the leaves expand with great rapidity,
and the tree is very quickly a mass of foliage. The leaves
are sometimes covered with little red lumps, the habitation
of a grub, and towards the Autumn are a good deal spotted
and blotched with irregularly shaped patches of purplish-

150 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

black, looking like splashes of ink, and fungoid in their
origin. The stems are often red, and towards Autumn
a good deal of this red colour may be found in the leaves,
but the sycamore does not contribute much towards
the Autumnal splendour of colouring in the woods, for
very often its foliage merely shrivels up, turns a dull
brown, and forthwith drops. The flowers individually are
very small, and greenish in colour, but are clustered loosely
together in considerable numbers in the hanging racemes
that appear abundantly in the early Spring. The bees are
always very busy with them, finding them bountifully
honey-laden.

The fruits of the sycamore and the maple differ from
all others found in our woods and hedges, being composed
of two winged fruits joined together as shown in our
figure. One venerable author describes the arrangement
as “fruit fastened together by couples, one right against
another, with kernels bumping out neere to the place in
which they are combined: in all the other parts flat and
thin, like vnto parchment, and resembling the innermost
wings of grasshoppers.” A fruit thus winged is technically
called a samara, so the form we find in the sycamore and
maple is termed a double samara. These broad membranous
wings waft the seeds away, and thus we may find the young
plants widely dispersed from the parental home, starting life
for themselves in the crannies of the stonework of the old
church tower, in the cracks of the rocks, or wherever else
the conditions are fairly kindly to them. While the double
samara form differentiates the sycamore and the maple
from all other trees, they wear this exceptional distinction
with yet a difference, the twin wings of the sycamore

MAPLE 151

being nearly parallel, or at all events not making more
than a right angle with each other, while in the maple
the two are almost or quite in a straight line with each
other, so that their extremities are as far from each other
as it is possible for them to be.

MAPLE (Acer Campestre)

The Maple, cer campestre, is undoubtedly a true
native, indigenous in south England and the midland
counties, but not in Scotland or Ireland. Its Anglo-Saxon
name is mapul, a sufficient explanation of its popular name,
though one authority on plants would have us _ believe
that we call it maple from the Latin amabdilis, because the
plant has such beautiful leaves.

The maple may sometimes be found as a tree, and
attaining to a height of thirty feet or so, or even, under
exceptional circumstances, more than this. Chaucer, in the
Romant of the Rose, writes—

There were elmes great and strong,

Maples, ash .
thus giving it full arboreal rank, but we more ordinarily
find it in hedge or copse as scarcely more than a large bush.
It bears the shears well, and in those bygone days, when
it was the fashion to border the parterres with grotesquely
fashioned hedges, bearing some sort of similitude to bird
or beast, some resemblance to globe or pyramid, the maple
was in great request. It flourishes in a chalky soil, though
one may find it doing well almost anywhere.

The wood of the maple is very compact, and of fine

grain, but the outer bark is curiously corky and rough,

152 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

being deeply furrowed. An old name for the maple is
the maser-tree, as from its wood were made the maser-
bowls that were so prized in the middle ages. The wood
is beautifully veined and takes a fine polish, and the
collection of fine pieces of it made into tables, cabinets, and
the like, was one of the hobbies of the wealthy connoisseurs
of ancient Rome.

The foliage is throughout the Summer of a somewhat
sombre green, but in the Autumn turns to a deep, clear,
golden-yellow colour, that makes the maples, either in
wood or hedgerow, particularly in evidence. It will be
recalled that the glory of the Canadian “ Fall” is largely
owing to the different kinds of Maples, and especially to
the Scarlet Maple, -4cer rubrum.

The leaves of the maple are in pairs, and very
elegant in form; five-lobed, something like those of the
Sycamore, but much smaller, and having much deeper
indentations between the leaves. From the beauty of
form of the leaves, and the quaint charm of the winged
fruits, the Maple was one of the favourite subjects of the
14th Century carvers, and examples of its decorative use
may be freely found in the capitals and other ornate
features of the architecture of that date. The leaves are
sometimes found thickly covered with little red excrescences,
the work of a mite that burrows into the tissue of the
leaf with this result.

The flowers are very small, greenish in colour, and
borne in erect clusters. Some of the blossoms in these
clusters are bi-sexual, while others are uni-sexual, staminate
or pistillate alone. They may be found in the early
Summer. The fruits are ripe in October, when they turn

PLANE

PLANE 153

from green to reddish-brown. They are in form, as we
have already pointed out, while dwelling on those of the
Sycamore, double samaras.

PLANE (Pratanus OrIENTALIS)

The Plane is not a native of these Isles, being only
mentioned by the earlier herbalists as a great rarity’ but
it has now been planted so widely, and its curious spherical
fruits, hanging on the boughs months after the leaves
have disappeared, are so well known, that it claims from
us passing notice and an illustration, Plate XXIII.

Botanically it is the P/atanus orientalis. The generic
name, coming to us through the Latin, is Greek in its origin
and signifies round, some will tell us from the rounded
form of the leaf, some from the rounded mass made by the
tree itself, others from the round fruits. The tree is
mentioned by both Spenser and Milton, and by them called
the platane.

The plane is a tree of much gracefulness of form. Mant,
we see, calls it ‘the beauteous plane,” and it can scarcely
be said to be done justice to by those who see in it no more
than a rounded mass. It has a curious habit of throwing
off its bark in large flakes that adds to its picturesque
effect. In the Bible authorised in the reign of King James
we find a reference in Genesis xxx. 37, to the chestnut, but

! As, for instance, by Turner, in his Herbal of 1568. ‘I have seene,”
he says, “two very young trees in England, which were called there Playn
trees, whose leves in all poyntes were lyke vnto the leves of the Italian
Playn tre. And it is doubtles that these two tres were either brought out
of Italy, or of som farre countre beyond Italy, wherevnto the freres, monkes
and chanoners went a pilgrimage.”

154 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

both in the Septuagint and the English revised Version
this is translated as plane. The tree is abundant in
Palestine, and its Hebrew name, /4rmon, is derived from a
root signifying nakedness, in allusion to this habit of
throwing off its clothing. The tree bears smoky town
life better than most others, and is therefore often planted
in urban enclosures and thoroughfares. In one case that we
know of where this was done the vestrymen, with whom
knowledge of plant-life appears not to have been a strong
point, directly their planes began to shed their bark, issued
an indignant “ whereas,’’ offering a goodly reward for the
detection of the offender.

The leaves, as our illustration shows, are very pleasing
in form, cut into deep segments, and having their margins
sharply indented. The curious enlargement at the base of
the leaf-stalk will be noted. Soon after the opening of the
leaves the flowers appear. They are individually very
small, the staminate flowers being on different stems to the
pistillate, but each collected into globular catkins, or

“ buttons.””?

These buttons vary in number in each cluster
from about two to five, and are borne on long pendant
stems. In our figure one will be seen cut through the
centre. The seeds ripen in October or November.

The plane-tree has been held to be a great purifier of
the air, preventing plague and other epidemic diseases, while
the fruit, the leaves, and the bark have all been regarded

as of great remedial efficacy, from the mending of a cut

1 Gerard does not, in 1597, mention the plane-tree as growing in England,
but he tells us that the Surgeon of the Hercules, of London, knowing his
interest in such matters, ‘‘ brought one of these rough buttons, being the fruit
thereof,” to him, from Lepanto.

HOLLY 155

finger to the saving of the lives of those attacked by
deadly serpents or stung by scorpions.

According to Bacon, in his Sy/va Sy/varum, a.D. 1629,
“ The Irrigation of the plane Tree by Wine is reputed by
the Ancients to make it Fruitfull ;” though why one should
desire to make it fruitful, seeing that the fruit is of no
value, is not apparent. Bacon is, however, so far pleased
with the idea that he says, “It could be tried likewise with
Roots ;”” though we could hardly fancy, at all events in these
days of agricultural depression, a farmer giving out to his
men two dozen of champagne for the turnips. ‘ Vpon
Seeds it worketh no great Effects,” he says; a statement
that seems to imply that thus far he brought the matter
to the test of experiment, and that the results were not so
altogether and absolutely a failure as one would have
anticipated.

HOLLY (Ivex Aguiro.ium)

The evergreen Holly, clad in its bright deep green
and glossy foliage, and bedecked abundantly with brilliant
scarlet berries, is appreciated by all Nature-lovers as one
of our most beautiful trees; while, in addition to this
inherent charm, there are the added associations that spring
from the part it plays in our Christmas observances, eccle-
siastical and social. Even before the days of Christianity we
find the Romans adorning their homes with holly and other
evergreen foliage, since the great feast in honour of Saturn
fell in the Winter season ; neighbour presenting to neighbour
great bunches of holly in token of good-will, thus
antedating in their religious worship and kindly greeting
something at least of the spirit of the glorious song of

156 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

the angels at the birth of the Messiah. Our old Teutonic
ancestors hung the verdant boughs of the holly in their
dwellings, that the Sylvan spirits might, fleeing from the
rigour of Winter in the storm-swept woods, find in its
shelter a welcome resting-place. The early Christians,
instead of striving to abolish ingrained customs, confirmed
them, but diverted their meaning, and so the evergreen
boughs became the symbol of immortality, the expression
of rejoicing in the birth of Christ; while the sharply-
pricking leaves and blood-red berries foreshadowed, in
an age of symbolic teaching, the ensanguined cross of
thorn, the ultimate triumph won through suffering and
death.

The holly in Anglo-Saxon days was the /olegan, a
word which some would have us accept as derived from
the leaves being fol eege, all edge. This they certainly
are not, though one must admit on handling them that
their stiff spinous margins are much in evidence. In
old plant lists the holly is often called hulver, holm, hull,
or Christ-thorn. Botanically it ts the Ilex aquifolium.
It has been suggested that J/ex is from the Celtic ac, a point,
but this is certainly one of those cases where we may fail
to see the point. The specific name is from the Latin
acus and folium, and, happily enough, refers to the spiny
foliage of the holly.

Pliny tells us that Tibertus built the city of Tibur
around three holly-trees, a flight of birds passing over
them being considered a most favourable omen. Pliny
declares that these trees were standing in his time, that he
had indeed seen them; but, if so, they must have been
something over twelve hundred years old, and that seems

HOLLY

HOLE VY 157

to us, however it may have struck Pliny, as being a few
centuries too much for credence. The authority of
Pliny was so potent and so far-reaching that for centuries
after his death it needed but to add “as Pliny saith” to
the wildest statement, to secure for it complete acceptance.
It was, therefore, almost a shock, even to ourselves, when
we found the Editor of the dthenian Mercury in 1693,
declaring that he meant his periodical to last “as long
at least as the Raven lives, which is a very tough liv’d
Bird, and has ten times as many Lives as a Cat, if Pliny’s
Credit is Authentick ; and he’s very Sawcy that dares
Question the Authority of such a Reverend Old Boy as
that, as a great many Impertinent Dogmatical Upstarts
have done very often of late, and we amongst the rest.”

In England one rarely finds holly-trees of any great
size, though at Claremont, in Surrey, is one that stands
eighty feet high, and in the New Forest may be seen
several with a girth of eight or nine feet.1 The timber
becomes valuable when the tree is of any considerable
size, and so the trees are felled. The wood is very tough,

Save elme, ash, and crab-tree for cart and for plough,
Save step for a stile, of the crotch of the bough,
Save hazel for forkes, save sallow for rake,

Save hulver and thorne, thereof flail for to make.

The flail is now well-nigh as obsolete as a pair of
snuffers, but those who have heard its resounding blows on

1 “One that I know,” says the author of Adam ix Eden, ‘‘ had a Holly
Tree growing in his Orchard of that bignesse that being cut down he caused
it to be sawn out in Boards, and made himselfe thereof a Coffin, and if I
mistake not left enough to make his wife one also. But the parties were
very corpulent, and therefore you may imagine that the Tree could not
be small.”

158 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

the barn floor from morning to night will readily realise
that the wood it was made of had need to be tough.

The wood of the holly is of very fine grain, and as
white as ivory. It works well on the lathe, and can be cut
into veneers for the cabinet-maker, and at the time that
Tunbridge ware was in demand was of great value as
an inlay, one reason being that it took various stains so
very readily on its white surface, and could thus be
anything from holly to ebony that the mosaicist required.
It has been used, too, by the draughtsman on wood as a
substitute for box or pear, and the engraver for wall-paper
patterns finds its dense even surface no less valuable for
his special work. Asa tree it is much branched, and these
branches make excellent walking-sticks. At Tynyngham,
in Scotland, the seat of the Earl of Haddington, Selby, in
his History of Forest Trees, published in the year 1843,
tells us may be seen two thousand nine hundred and fifty
yards of holly hedges, planted nearly two hundred years
ago. In height they vary from ten to twenty five feet, and
are from nine to thirteen feet in width. These are hedges
indeed !

The leaves of the holly vary greatly in their prickliness,
the foliage on the younger shoots being almost or quite
free from spines, while the older and lower branches are
clothed with foliage of very spinous character. The upper
branches carry the less spiny foliage, and also the greater
proportion of the flowers and fruit. One old writer, we
see, affirms that “there be three sorts of Holly. 1. The
Holly Tree without prickles. 2. The Holly-bush with
prickly Leaves. 3. The Holly-bush with yellow Berries.
Yet there be some that affirme that with and without

HOLLY 159

prickles to be the same.” The difference in form between
divers leaves on the same holly-tree, though striking, is
really not so great as between the acutely-pointed five- or
seven-lobed leaves of the ivy when it is climbing, and the
simple ovate form of foliage that crowns the plant when it
has attained to the height of its ambition, and its climbing
days are over. Holly-leaves are very stout and rigid, of
a deep dark green above, and lighter beneath, of a par-
ticularly glossy surface, and of a very waved outline.

Holly-leaves contain an active principle termed Ilicine,
that was once held to be of great remedial efficacy, but
in later works on Materia Medica no mention is made
of it. It was for some little time strongly commended,
especially in the treatment of fevers, and as a tonic, but
divers reasons, commercial and medical, led to its gradual
disuse.

The flowers of the holly are found in May, and June.
They are small in size, white in colour, rather waxy in
texture and effect, clustering many together in the axils of
the leaves, and very popular with the bees. The corolla
is ordinarily four-cleft, but sometimes has five segments,
and the somewhat conspicuous stamens then follow suit,
being either four or five in number.

The berries are globular, and, to quote Gerard, “ of
the bignesse of a little Pease, or not much greater,” but
to be on the safe side we will say as large asa big Pease,
very smooth and shining, and, normally, of a rich scarlet
colour, though one may find them, under cultivation,
yellow, orange, or white; none of these, we venture to
think, being at all so charming as the brilliant scarlet.
On opening a berry we find four hard nuts neatly packed

160 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

together, and each of these contains one seed. Blackbirds,
thrushes, and many other birds devour them with avidity.
The human subject will be wise to avoid them, though
a couple of centuries ago our forefathers held them in great
repute, some ten or twelve being reckoned a dose, and
swallowed like pills, for various ailments. Our ancestors
would appear to have been of altogether tougher fibre
than ourselves, judging by the amount of port wine
that they drank, the wall-papers they could live with
without flinching. We imagine that in these latter days
any one indulging in this wholesale fashion in holly-
berries would speedily become the victim of TIlexitis,
unless kindly Nature, the berries being strongly emetic
in their action, came to his aid, and warned him not to do
anything quite so foolish again, lest he became an awful
example to the world at large, an interesting case in the
text-books, a tender memory to his sorrowing friends.
Holly is one of the trees that yields bird-lime for the
wiles of the fowler. It was made, according to the author
of dam in Eden, by “ putting the Barke of Holly into
a hole made in moist, foggy ground, and covering it with
boughs of Trees, and some earth over till it be putrified,
which will be within a fortnight: being afterwards beaten
in a Mortar it will become thick and clammy, so that
the filthinesse being cleared therefrom by often washing,
and a little Oyle of Nuts added thereto it will be as good
as that which is made of Misseltoe, and being applyed
with the Yolke of an Egge to any place that hath any
thorn, prick, or Splinter therein it draweth it forth, but
it is dangerous to be used inwardly.” Why any one should
ever think of applying bird-lime internally, to remove a

HOLLY 161

thorn or anything else, one cannot imagine. The use of
bird-lime we fancy, is now very much a thing of the
past. There was a man in the days of our boyhood who
lived near Ripley, our home in that far-off time, who
prided himself greatly on his bird-lime. He told us how
he one day spread some liberally along the top shoots of
his garden hedge, and, hearing a tremendous twittering,
presently went to see how he had fared. The birds,
hopelessly entangled, made a supreme effort at escape
when he appeared, the result being that his hedge was
uprooted, and the last he saw of it was its being carried
off by the birds out in the direction of Woking. Assuming
this story to be true it speaks volumes for the strength
of his bird-lime.

CHAPTER III

Plants of the Moorland, the Meadow, the Stream—Difficulty of Classification
—The Yellow Iris—Obedience in Nature to Law—The Relief of
Choler—The Touch-me-not—A North American Plant—The Alder—
Amsterdam and Venice built thereon—The Gladdon, or Foetid Iris—The
Elder—Its Value in Medicine—The laciniated Variety—Bagpipes—
The Bilberry—The Bleaberry—The Cowberry, or red Whortleberry—The
Strawberry Tree—" A Fruyt of small Honor”—The Butcher’s Broom—
Thorn Apple—A Remedy for Asthma—The Henbane—Skeletonising
Leaves—A Plant of Saturn—Influence of Stars on Human Life—The
Writings of Matthiolus—The Dwale, or deadly Nightshade—Its Virulent
Properties—Atropine—The Juniper—The Biblical Tree so-called—lIts
Employment in Distillation—The Antidote of Mithridates—Mistletoe
—Druidic Rites—Forbidden in Churches—Parasitic—On what Trees
found—The Compleat Husbandman—Pliny on Druidism—Mistletoe
growing in Westminster—How to grow Mistletoe—Sir John Colbatch on
its Medicinal Value—The Cross-leaved Mistletoe—Paley on Evidences
of Design—The Columbine—What is an Indigenous Plant ?—A Symbol
of Grief—The Scarlet Poppy—Buttercups—The Parsnip—The Sylva
Sylvarum of Bacon—Carrot, or Bird’s-nest—Cranberries—The Bear-
berry—The Crowberry—Broom—Shepherd’s Needle—Conclusion.

HILE in our first chapter we dealt mainly with

plants of the hedgerow, and in the second with
trees of the woodland, it soon became abundantly evident
to us that such an attempt to discriminate and sort out
was only possible on the broadest possible basis, many
an aspiring hedgerow shrub being quite prepared to
become a tree of very respectable size if only the fateful
shears would not so persistently cut short its ambitions ;
while, on the other hand, some plants that are included

162

INTRODUCTORY 163

amongst our woodland trees, such as the maple, are to be
found abundantly as constituents in the farmer’s walls of
living green. The captious critic, if there be such a person,
might even declare that the regal oak itself, the monarch
of the forest, need not be sought for in the forest at all,
being in many parts of the country one of the commonest
of roadside trees, so that as we ramble along the skirting
hedgerow we can at will as easily gather either the
blackberries or the acorns that it yields. There is no
gainsaying the fact, and one can only plead in extenuation
that such difficulty of classification seems inevitable ; and
rejoice, moreover, that dear mother Nature does not pen
up her treasures in sharp divisions, but gives us everywhere
a wealth of variety, beauty, and interest, so that black-
berries and acorns are both possible to us at once, even
if in botanical books they are many pages apart.

In the present chapter we propose to deal with divers
other plants that scarcely belong to either of the preceding
groups ; plants of the stream, the meadow, the moorland,
and so forth. Yet here again we feel that we shall have
need to plead for the greatest elasticity of treatment for
ourselves, and an all-embracing charity from our readers,
or we shall be having the brain-bound pedant, if there
be such a person, declaring that the buttercup or the
campion that we class as flowers of the meadow may be
found freely enough amongst the rank vegetation at the
foot of the hedgerow, and should, therefore, have found
a resting-place in our first chapter, and been read about
and forgotten long ere this.

°

164 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

YELLOW IRIS (Iris Pseupacorus)

Whatever difficulties of classification may yet be before
us, we shall, we think, be on entirely safe ground in
commencing our new chapter with the Yellow Iris, the
plant we figure in our twenty-fifth illustration, since, as
a water-plant, it has never shown any desire to roam,
bryony-wise, over the hedges, nor has it everibeen known
to leave its aqueous home to compete on their own
ground with such forest giants as the massive oak or
the wide-spreading beech.

This yellow iris is one of our most graceful water-
plants, even in such goodly company as the peerless water-
lily, the ever-welcome forget-me-not, the golden-flowered
loosestrife, the stately flowering rush, the quaint buckbean,
and many another charming water or waterside plant that
springs to our thoughts as we wander in imagination by
some placid stream, and recall something of the wealth of
floral beauty that rises from its waters or fringes its banks.

Our plant is called iris because, though always found
bearing the golden yellow flower that our illustration
shows, it belongs to a genus having blossoms of the richest
variety of colours, Jris is the Greek word for the rainbow,
and in all the centuries since the days of Theophrastus, who
bestowed the name on this family of plants somewhere about
three hundred and fifty years before the birth of Christ,
these beautiful flowers, so full of rich variety of colour,
have borne this expressive name. Its specific name is
pseudacorus, from the Greek word for false, and acorus, the
sweet flag or sedge. This sweet sedge in turn is the Acorus
Calamus ; so that we arrive at this point, that the yellow

YELLOW IRIS 165

iris, so far at least as its foliage is concerned, looks like
the sweet sedge, but still it is not the sweet sedge after
all, and any one who so calls it names it falsely. As this
acorus was so-called from two Greek words signifying an
ailment of the eye, for which this plant was held to be
a remedy, it was distinctly important that those needing
optical relief should not be putting their faith in the
wrong plant, and thus the iris has had tacked on to its
poetic title this very prosaic after-note of warning.

A good old English popular name for this yellow iris,
and for any other iris, wild or cultivated, is the flag, and
this name it derives from the gaily-coloured outer members
of its perianth floating in the air, like banners on some
great day of festival, our ancestors delighting in pageantry,
and suspending, in token of rejoicing, rich hangings from
their balconies and casements, and seeing in these iris
flowers a suggestion of these suspended flags. Any one,
by the way, who hung out a noble yellow flag to-day
would be regarded by his fellow-townsmen with grave
suspicion, as it is the quarantine signal, and implies that
within the building or ship so distinguished some infectious
and deadly visitant has found a home.

The yellow iris may be found abundantly all over
Britain at the edges of streams, in marsh land, and in
ditches, attaining to a height of some two feet. Curiously
enough, it bears transplantation excellently well from these
distinctly watery conditions, and will flourish, if one
so pleases, with our choice pelargoniums, phloxes, wall-
flowers, and many other things that would certainly not
repay the visit, or settle happily down in the natural
habitat of the yellow iris.

166 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

The leaves of the iris stand stiff and erect around the
flower-bearing stems: the guarding swords drawn around
the flag. In Germany the plant is the Wasser Schwertlilie,
the water sword-lily. If we gather a bunch of Iris we
shall be well advised to see that it includes several buds,
no matter how immature, for, if we put our gatherings
into water, these buds continue to develop, and they presently
expand into flowers. The same thing may be noticed
with the buds of the dog-rose and the field-rose. With
either of these three plants, the pleasure of their possession
may be made much more lasting by gathering not merely
the open flowers that fade on the morrow, but by taking
steps to insure a pleasant succession of them.

The flowers are of conspicuous beauty and quaintness
of form, being something rather outside what we may
perhaps, without disrespect to many beautiful flowers,
call the ordinary type of blossom, the saucer-like form.
These iris blossoms have their parts in threes: three large
pendant members of the perianth ; three inner members,
much smaller than these and erect ; three petal-like stigmas
alternating with this second series, and each arching over
its special one of the three stamens. ‘The capsule, the
fruit that succeeds these, green in colour, and containing
numerous pale-brown seeds, conforms equally to this
numerical law, being three-celled, and if cut across the
centre would be found to be three-sided. If we start with
the idea of an equilateral triangle, and then substitute for
each angle a rounded form, we shall get very fairly close to
the form of the fruit when subjected to this cross-section.
When the seeds are mature this capsule opens from above
downwards into three valves, so that the seeds are revealed

YELLOW IRIS 167

to sight and presently dispersed. As the fruit scarcely
begins to put in an appearance until after the flowers have
ceased, many who have been attracted by its yellow
blossoms may have failed to notice the plant in this
later stage.

Nature, we need scarcely say, while rigidly obedient
to law, system, and order, and altogether out of sympathy
with the casual and the happy-go-lucky, is also full of
charming variety ; and, while the geometrician lays out
with mathematical precision his equilateral triangle, and
the designer, having drawn one half of ,his leaf, takes a
piece of tracing paper and makes the other half like unto
it, Nature declines to be bound within conditions so
rigid. We would venture to say that if we sought to
find two leaves exactly alike in size, veining, and outline
in a hundred gathered at random from any tree, our quest
would be in vain. There is in Nature a wonderful
unity in variety; there is no less a wonderful variety
in unity.

The farmer in these latter days, either by hay, good
pasturage, or well-grown crops of swedes, turnips, or other
roots, is able to feed his stock without going outside the
store that his meadows or arable land will yield him ; but in
earlier days outside help had often to be invoked, and then,
amongst many other things never thought of nowadays,
the leaves of the iris were gathered, dried, and carried
off to supplement the store of fodder. Apart from this,
our forefathers found, as they did for almost everything
else that grew, divers uses for the iris, using its leaves
for thatching, or for the seating of chairs, roasting its
seeds, coffee-fashion, as a beverage, and also, of course,

168 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

applying it to medicinal use, an application rarely indeed
overlooked in the consideration of a plant’s “ virtues.”
We accordingly find divers preparations of its very
astringent root, leaves, and seeds in vogue for the relief
of toothache, dropsy, pneumonia, and various other ills
that afflict humanity, and which, we fear, iris notwith-
standing, will continue to do so. “The root cleane
washed and stamped with a few drops of Rose-water,
and laid plaister-wise vpon the face of man or woman,
doth in two dayes at the most take away the blacknesse
or blewnesse of any stroke or bruse.” One seems to see
in this a delicately-worded hint that even in those good
old times men were brutal and women aggravating ; black~
ness on the face, in some circles of society a not uncommon
complaint, suggesting that the peaceful current of family
life had become somewhat ruffled by some breeze that
had sprung up. In such case another good application
would be a preparation of the root, for “the iuyce of
the same doth mightily and vehemently draw forth
choler.”

TOUCH-ME-NOT (Impatiens Futva)

If our riverside stroll that brought us in contact
with the yellow iris chanced to be along the banks of
the Wey or some portion of the Thames, we shall very
probably have found a balsam-like flower, orange-red in
colour and a foot or so in height, rising amidst the
luxuriant riverside herbage. This would be the Impatiens
fulva, a North American plant really, that in some
mysterious way has thoroughly established itself in the
River Wey, and the Basingstoke Canal, and other water-

TOUCH-ME-NOT 169

courses that communicate with them, and has now extended
itself from the mouth of the Wey into the Thames, being
found as far down the greater stream as Chiswick. It
is a freely-seeding annual of succulent habit. Its botanical
name Jmpatiens and its popular name Touch-me-not are
most appropriate, for on the slightest touch the fruit
bursts open, scattering its seeds abroad with startling
energy. The five valves of which the outer wrapping of
the capsule consists, at once then twist themselves tightly
into a spiral form.

Our home for many years being on the banks of the
Wey, the touch-me-not was a plant as well known to us
as the iris itself, and in our boyish days we must have
compressed the tips of these capsules times beyond all
numerical computation, to see them thus start into vigorous
action, quite oblivious that we were treating in this un-
ceremonious fashion so distinguished a stranger. We recall,
later on, some one once bringing us a piece for identifica-
tion. In reaching out to gather it their foot had slipped
off a mossy old tree trunk that they had too implicitly
trusted to, and they were there and then immersed in
over six feet of water. This seeker after knowledge was,
naturally, interested to know that the plant was called
the touch-me-not, a name that they probably never forgot.

Another species, the Impatiens noli-me-tangere, is found
sometimes in damp woods in various parts of England.
It has very slight claim to be considered a native plant.
As its botanical’ name from beginning to end implies, its
fruit exhibits the same curious and startling elasticity as
that of its near relative, the J. fu/va.

170 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

ALDER (Atnus GtutiNnosa)

While we can scarcely regard the Alder on its own
merits as one of our more attractive trees, it often, when
found in large masses, gives a greatly added charm to
our river scenery, whether found fringing the rushing
torrents and mountain streams of the north, or by the
more placid streams of the south, that have a tranquil
charm of their own as they wind amidst the low-lying
meadows. The ramification of the alder is somewhat stiff,
and the growth a little formal, lacking the picturesqueness
of many of our trees, but its masses of dark foliage contrast
admirably with the lighter green of the willows and black
poplars that are ordinarily its companions in the watery
situations! which form its habitat. It may be found
occasionally fifty or sixty feet high, but is ordinarily con-
siderably less than this, anything from a mere shrub to
a small tree. It may be found in sodden, water-logged
land, in moist woods, fringing ditches and such-like aqueous
spots, but thrives best where there is some little current
and movement of the water.

It is one of the commonest of our indigenous trees
if we only seek it in its proper domain. In Anglo-Saxon
times it was the e/r, alr, or aler, orthography in those
days having a licence that is now denied to it. The “d”
in our word alder is supposed to have been inserted at
a later date for the sake of euphony ; but other folks

1 The shooter eugh, the broad-leaved sycamore,
The barren plaintaine, and the walnut sound;

The myrrhe that her foul sin doth still deplore:
Alder, the owner of all waterish ground.

FAIRFAX.

AL DE

ALDER 171

seem to get on very happily without it, the tree being in
Scotland the Eller, while in France it is the Aulne, in
Denmark the Elle, in Sweden the 4/, and in Italy the Ano.
Botanically it is the A/nus glutinosa. Alnus is its old
Roman name, and may be found in the writings of Pliny
and other ancient authors. Some more modern writers,
however, ignoring this most natural reason for the use of
the generic title, profess to find a derivation for it in the
Celtic a/, near, and Jan, a river, or even go to a Hebrew
source, aelon, a word meaning vigorous.

The leaves of the alder are of very rounded form, and
have their edges serrated ; when young they are decidedly
sticky to the touch, hence the specific name g/utinosa.
“The leaves of this tree,” says an old writer, “are in
shape somewhat like the Hasell, but they are blacker, and
more wrinkled, very clammie to handle, as though they
were sprinckled with honie.” They are of a very dark
and sombre green and retain this colour while most of the
other trees are bedecked in all the splendours of Autumn.

The stamen-bearing catkins of the alder are produced
about the middle of September, and then await the arrival
of the pistil-bearers in the following Spring. In the males
the catkins are built up of three-lobed scales, each protecting
three flowers, and each flower having four stamens. These
catkins are of considerable length, and, when fully matured,
are cylindrical, pendent, and of a dark red colour. In the
earlier stage, as seen in the upper part of our illustration,
Plate XXVI., they are somewhat tapering, and more or less
erect. In the pistil-bearing catkins the scales are slightly
three-cleft, and each sheltering two flowers. These catkins
are small, barely an inch in length, and ovate in form. They

172 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

ultimately become woody, very like diminutive fir-cones,
and remain on the tree long after the seeds are shed.’ It
is in this stage of their history that we see them represented
in the lower portion of our drawing. The rich red of
their earlier days becomes ultimately a dull brownish-black.

The wood of the alder is almost imperishable if kept
continuously under damp conditions. This valuable property
was well known to the ancients, as passages in Virgil,
Vitruvius, and other classic authors, abundantly testify. The
Dutch have largely employed it in their watery land,
both in their dykes and as the substructure on which much
of Amsterdam and other of their towns are reared. Venice,
again, rises from its lagoon on foundations that are largely
piles of alder. Its wood, too, makes exceptionally good
charcoal, so that it is largely cultivated for the manufacture
of gunpowder. When the wood is of any considerable
size, it is in repute with the cabinet-makers, as it is
beautifully veined, and under ordinary conditions takes its
share in various rustic requirements. The whole plant is
very astringent, and its bark has in consequence been used
in tanning leather, and for the preservation of fishing-nets
and cordage, and has had some little repute for dyeing
purposes, though in these latter days more efficient
materials are readily available. It was held to be of virtue
as a tonic in the treatment of agues and intermittent fevers,

1 The blossome or floures are like the aglets of the Birch tree: which
being vaded, there followeth a scaly fruit closely growing together, as big
as a Pigeons egge, which toward Autumne doth open and the seed falleth
out and is lost.—GERARD.

2 The barke is much vsed of poore country Diers, for the dying of
course cloth, cappes, hose, and such like into a black colour, whereunto it
serveth very well.—GERARD.

DDO

GLADDON 173

and its leaves put into the boots of the traveller were
thought to preserve him from becoming footsore and to
give him great power of endurance.

GLADDON (Iris Feripissma)

The fruit of the Gladdon, or foetid Iris, forms the
subject of our twenty-seventh illustration. This gladdon,
the Iris fetidissima of the botanist, is a very near relative
of the yellow flag, a plant that has recently engaged
our attention, and which may be found figured in Plate
XXV. It is in some country districts called, with full
force of vituperation, the stinking iris, and it will be
noticed that in its scientific name nothing but the strength
of a Latin superlative suffices to express its obnoxious
character. All this, however, is a little uncalled for, for
while some persons, gifted with a fine sense of smell,
heap the most slighting epithets upon it, others, perhaps
no less discriminating, and of a finer charity to see good
where possible, compare its odour to that of roast beef.
Whereat one can only recall the old reminder of how
tastes are found to differ. This vilified odour only arises
when the plant is bruised.

While the yellow flag prospers by the sides of our
streams the gladdon is a lover of the woods and pastures.
It is abundant in many parts of the south and west of
England, but becomes much rarer as we travel north,
and finally disappears. The particular specimens we
figure we obtained from the Isle of Wight; we have
also seen it plentifully in Dorsetshire, Somersetshire, and
elsewhere.

174 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

The gladdon flowers in May, and these flowers, of
a rather dull violet-blue, are succeeded by the capsules.
These, on ripening, cleave into three valves and reveal
the brilliant orange seeds that render the plant so especially
attractive in the Autumn.

ELDER (Samsucus Nicra)

The Elder, of which, on Plate XXVIII., we represent
the rich clustering fruit, will doubtless be familiar to all
our readers, sometimes pressed into the farmer’s service
as hedge-making material, and at others living a life of
independence and aspiring to the dignity of a tree.
When arborescent it is much branched, and has often
a gnarled and venerable appearance, when growing in
an exposed position, that perhaps its age does not quite
warrant. Such matters, however, are but relative, and
an elder, the twentieth of the age of an oak, may be as
aged as the monarch himself, and sinking beneath the
weight of years. The old wood of the elder is curiously
hard, while the younger stems are in their interiors mere
pith.

These stems, so readily hollowed, we need scarcely
remind those who were once boys, or those happy maidens
who are blessed with brothers, are the raw material of
the erst valued pop-gun. If any of our readers are,
after all, ignorant on this point, Shakespeare, at least,
was not, for what says he in Henry V.2—“That’s a
perilous shot out of an elder gunne, that a poore and
private displeasure can doe against a monarch.” Beaumont
and Fletcher, in Philaster, also introduce this hedgerow

ELDER 175

artillery—“ If he give not back his crown again, upon
the report of an elder-gun I haue no augury.” It was
an old belief that it was an elder-tree Judas selected
to hang himself upon.’ Spenser speaks of it as “the bitter
elder,” and we find many uncanny beliefs centring around
the tree.

The elder may often be seen growing vigorously on
old walls * as it seems to have a great power of adaptability,
and to need little root-hold for its nourishment and
support, and we need scarcely remind our readers anew
that it may often be encountered as a hedgerow plant.
It cannot, however, under these circumstances be considered
a very great success, as its long, pliant branches and
generally open growth offer too little resistance to
marauders.

The elder is indigenous and is found in the earliest
plant lists as the ellen, ellarn, ellam, or eller. In France
it is the Sureau, while its Italian title, Sambuco ; the Spanish,
Sauco; and the Portuguese, Sadugueiro, are all evidently
derived from the old Latin name, Sambucus. Some would
tell us that this Latin word is derived from Sambyx, the
reputed first finder of the plant, but, without undue

1 Look you, he shall be your Judas, and you shall be his elder-tree
to hang on.—BEN Jonson, “Every man out of his humour.”

2 The Ancients have affirmed that there are some Herbs that grow
out of Stone; Which may be, for that it is certaine that Toads have
bin found in the Middle of a Free-Stone. We see also that Flints, lying
upon the Ground, gather Mosse: And Wall-Flowers, and some other
Flowers, grow vpon Walls: But whether vpon the Maine Bricke, or
Stone, or whether out of the Lime or Chinkes, is not well obserued: For
Elders and Ashes have beene seene to grow out of Steeples: But they
manifestly grow out of Cleftes. And besides it is doubtfull, whether the

Mortar it selfe putteth it forth, or whether some Seeds be not let fall by
Birds.—Bacon, Sylva Sylvarum, 1629.

176 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

depreciation of his discovery, it would be as difficult, one
would imagine, to indicate the time or place of this striking
find as to say who first discovered a rook or a flint
stone. Others have it that the name is derived from the
Sambucus, a primitive musical instrument which some would
tell us was strung like a guitar, but which seems more
probably to have been of bag-pipe type, that had its pipes
made out of hollowed elder-stems, but it is much more
probable that in such a case the plant gave the name to
the instrument than that the reverse took place. Still, it
is a pretty problem to be threshed out, the question at
stake being—Did the sambucus give its name to the
sambucus ? or, on the other hand, discarding this idea, was
the sambucus so called from the sambucus? When this
knotty question is settled there remains yet another—If the
sambucus really was of bag-pipe type, could it be truthfully
described as a musical instrument at all??

The leaves of the elder are, as our illustration shows,
of pinnate form, and ordinarily consist of two lateral pairs
of leaflets and a terminal. One occasionally finds a very
curious variation where the leaflets are deeply cut into
very numerous and irregularly formed segments, or, as
it is technically called, laciniated. We found a good
example of this in a hedge near Worthing while preparing
our illustrations, but the form is so entirely abnormal that
one could not well here introduce it. Gerard, in 1633,

! The Lincolnshire bag-pipes. I beheld these as most ancient, because
a very simple sort of Musick, being little more than an Oaten pipe improved
with a bag, wherein the imprisoned wind pleadeth melodiously for the
Inlargement thereof. It is incredible with what agility it inspireth the heavy
heels of the Country Clowns, probably the ground-work of the poetical
fiction of dancing Satyrs.—FULLER.

ELDER 177

figures and describes this, declaring that “the jagged
Elder tree groweth like the common Elder in body,
branches, shootes, pith, floures, fruit, and stinking smell,
and differeth onely in the fashion of the leaves, which doth
so much disguise the tree, and put it out of knowledge,
that no man would take it for a kinde of Elder vntill he
hath smelt thereunto, which will quickely shew from whence
he is descended: for these strange Elder leaues are very
much jagged, rent or cut euen vnto the middle rib.”

The flower clusters of the elder are generally five-
branched, and consist of very numerous creamy-white,
five-lobed flowers. These have an odour that to many
persons is very objectionable, and especially when the
plants are numerous,' and thickly covered with flowers.
To this abundance of blossom succeeds an equal profusion
of fruit, small individually, globular, and of a deep purple-
black. The stems at this season are often of a deep
crimson colour, and this, with the varying tints of the
foliage touched by the fiery fingers of Autumn, plus the
great mass of luscious-looking berries, results in a rich
colour-harmony that is very attractive. The rustic house-
wife gathers these berries and prepares from them a sort
of wine, that so far as our recollection serves, since we
have had no care to renew an acquaintance made many
years ago, is a horrible preparation. It is curious that
Worlidge, in his Mystery of Husbandry—our edition is
dated 1675—-makes no mention of this, though he greatly
commends “ Syder”’ “to lessen that great consumption we
make of French wines, which we drink to the enriching
of a Foreiner, the impoverishing of our selves, and the

! The bank where flowering Elders crowd.—THompson, “ Spring.”

12

178 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

great prejudice of our healths, especially by the corroding
Claret,” and greatly commends “‘ Wine of Plums, Rasberry
Wine, Wine of Currans,” and other home-grown beverages.

The elder has been held of great medicinal repute,
the various parts of the tree being extolled by our
forefathers, generation after generation, as curing almost
everything. ‘ The Decoction of the Root of Elder in Wine,”
affirms the author of that delightful book, 4dam in Eden,
“cureth the Biting of Venemous Beasts, as also of a mad
Dogge; the berries boyled in Wine perform the same
effects: the Haire of the Head washed therein is made
black. The Iuyce of the green Leaves applyed to the
Inflammation of the Eyes asswageth them, and the Leaves
boyled till they be tender, then mixed with Barly meale
asswageth inflammations in any other part, helpeth places
that are burnt with fire or scalded with water, and easeth
the paines of the Gout, being beaten and boyled with the
tallow of a Bull or Goat, and layd warme thereto. The
Powder of the seedes first prepared in Vinigar and then
taken in Wine for certaine dayes together is a meanes to
abate and consume the flesh of a corpulent body. Should
I give you all the Vertues of Elder at large I should much
exceed the usuall Limits of a Chapter, and therefore I shall
only give you a Brevias of them, and referre you to that
learned peece of Dr. Martin Blockwich where you may
satisfie yourselfe perfectly of euery particular. There is
hardly a Disease from the Head to the Foot but it cures.
It is profitable for the Head-ach, for Ravings and Wakings,
Hypocondriack and Méellancholly, the Falling-sicknesse,
Catarrhes, Deafenesse, Faintnesse, and Feavours. The
young shoots boyled like Asparagos, and the young Leaves

BILBERRY 179

and Stalkes boyled in fat broth draweth forth mightily
Choler, and so do the tender Leaves eaten with Oyle and
Salt.” About the best medicinal use we seem able to put
the plant to nowadays is the fabrication of elder-flower
water as a pleasant cooling application to inflamed or weak

eyes.

BILBERRY (Vaccinium MyrtiLius)

On open moorlands and bleak commons, up to some
four thousand feet above the sea, one may often find in
profusion the little Bilberry, the Vaccinium Myrtillus.
Several early writers speak of its being found on Hampstead
Heath, and it may still occur there. We have met with
it in abundance in Surrey and Sussex, but it is more
especially found in the north, where the extent of wind-
swept moorland is so much greater. It is but a small plant,
thickly covered with small leaves not unlike those of the
box, and little, delicate-looking, waxen, bell-like, drooping
flowers, of a pale pink. To these in turn succeed the
berries, at first green, then red, and finally, black. These
ripened berries when growing are covered with a beautiful
bloom, but this is to a great extent lost when the children,
“going bilberrying,” gather them by the thousand and
bring them to market. The fruit has a very pleasant acid
taste, and deeply stains the lips; but, refreshing as the
berries are when picked and eaten on the mountain side,
they are much better when cooked. They are some-
times called bullberries. From a certain crispness when
bitten they are sometimes called crackberries, while another
common name is whortleberry, sometimes contracted and

corrupted into hurts.

180 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

Would our readers place themselves beneath our
guidance we could readily show them in abundance these
“hurts” in the wild moorland districts around Leith
Hill, the highest eminence in Surrey, a breezy land of
gloriously extensive prospects, having in one direction
the sea as its horizon, and our stroll should include a
visit to what, with all its pleasant possibilities of reaping
a goodly harvest of these welcome whortleberries, is
locally known as Hurts Hill.

It will be recalled how Shakespeare, in the Merry Wives
of Windsor, refers to the bloom on the fruit— Cricket,
to Windsor chimnies shalt thou leap; there pinch the
maids as blue as bilberries.” In Adam in Eden we read
that the berries are ‘‘an excellent Medicine, for those that
are troubled with an old Cough, but if they be eaten by
those that have a weak Stomach they will much offend it.
Painters, to colour Paper and Cards, do make a kind of
Purple blew colour, putting thereto some Allome and Galls,
whereby they can make it lighter and sadder as they please.
Some poor folk do take a Pot full of the juyce strained,
whereunto an Ounce of Allome, four spoonfulls of good
Wine Vinegar, and a quarter of an Ounce of the wast of
the Copper forgings, being put together and boyled all
together into this Liquor, whilst it is reasonable, but not
too hot, they put their Cloth, Wool, Thred, or Yarn
therein, letting it lie for a good while, which being taken
out and hung up to dry, will have the like Turkey blew
colour: and if they would have it sadder, they will put
thereunto, in the boyling, an Ounce of broken Gauls.”
Poor Gauls! In the far-off school-boy days, when we
were wrestling with Cesar de Bello Gallico, we bore them

BLEABERRY—COWBERRY 181

scant affection, but we never wished them a fate quite so
bad as this !

BLEABERRY (Vaccinium ULicrInosuM)

A closely allied plant to the bilberry is the Bleaberry,
Vaccinium uliginosum. It is very similar to the last, but
has smaller flowers and rather larger berries. The fruit
ripens somewhat later, and is scarcely so acid in flavour.
It has the same grey bloom. It may readily be dis-
tinguished from the bilberry by its foliage. In the
bilberry the leaves are smooth on each side and toothed
along their margins, while in the present plant they have
a downy, glaucous under-surface, and their margins un-
broken by serrations. As the bleaberry is found on marshy
ground, it is sometimes called the bog whortleberry. Both
these plants supply valued food to the grouse and other
birds. ‘“Blae” is a north-country word meaning livid,
pinched, blue-looking, and these berries are bleaberries
because of the blue-grey down that is upon them.

COWBERRY (Vaccinium Vitis Inca)

Yet another Vaccinium is the Cowberry—V. Vitis Idea.
Its stem, as befits a mountain and moorland plant, is short
and sturdy, and, in May and June, bears at its extremity
a cluster of little campanulate flowers, of waxen texture,
and of pale flesh colour. In September we find the ripened
fruit, a many-seeded, globular berry, and scarlet in colour ;
much like the perhaps better-known cranberry. It is
somewhat harsh and bitter to the taste in its fresh
state, but when the fruit is made into jelly, or otherwise

182 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

passes under the hands of the cook, it becomes very
palatable and acceptable. The plant is an evergreen, very
compact in growth, branching freely, and has its numerous
clusters of flowers pendant from the ends of the branches.
From the colour of its fruit it is sometimes called the
red whortleberry.

The meaning of the generic name, Vaccinium, is not
absolutely clear, but it has been reasonably supposed to
have been somehow corrupted from the Latin Baccinia, a
word meaning a plant that bears berries freely. The
specific names of the plants, Myrtillus, uliginosus, and Vitis
Idea, are bestowed because the bilberry has very myrtle-
like leaves ; because the bleaberry is a plant of the marshes ;
because Linneus chose to call the cowberry the Vine of
Mount Ida: wherefore, we cannot say.

STRAWBERRY-TREE (Arsutus UNEpo)

The last two plants that we have referred to must be
sought in the great bleak moorlands and on the rocky slopes
of northern England, or Wales, or away, farther north yet,
amongst the mountain scenery of Scotland. Our next plant,
the Strawberry-Tree, the Arbutus Unedo, if we would see
it in a truly wild state, entails a visit to the west of Ireland.
Here, however, it is in abundance, and contributes much
to the charm of the scenery, delightful as that is, around
Glengariff and the lakes of Killarney. Hooker, Bentham,
and other authorities entirely accept the strawberry-tree
as being indigenous to Ireland, but it is seen at its best in
the south of Europe, and it has been suggested that in a
past long since forgotten, one result, maybe, of a pilgrimage,

STRAWBERRY-TREE 183

or of a summons to Rome, the monks of Mucross Abbey
may have introduced it ; andthe plant, finding itself in a
soil and climate congenial to it, settled down, and gradually
asserted its right to a place in our Flora.

The flowers of the strawberry-tree are produced in
August, the fruit ripening in the following Summer. These
flowers are of a pale greenish-white often tinged with pink,
and grouped in clusters at the ends of the stems. They are
in form much like the bells of a heath, or of the lily
of the valley.

The berry is of a crimson red colour, globular, and of
a curiously granulated surface, and suggesting, at a casual
glance, a strawberry. On cutting it across we find it to be
five-celled and many-seeded. We have, in Plate XXIX.,
a drawing of the foliage and fruit. Ovid writes of “the
arbutus laden with blushing fruit.” The berries, as we
see in our illustration, are pendant.

When the tree was brought across from the Emerald
Isle, to find a welcome place in our English shrubberies
and gardens, seems not to be at all known. Parkinson
merely says, we see, in his Theatrum Botanicum, published
in 1640, that “it came to us from Ireland” ; while Evelyn,
writing in the reign of Charles II., declares that “the
arbutus is too much neglected by us; making that a rarity
which grows so common and naturally in Ireland. One
name of the plant is the Cain’s Apple, the unpleasant
inference being that the globular crimson fruits are a
reminder of the life-blood of the murdered Abel.

Though the fruit is sometimes eaten, no hint as to
its strawberry-like appearance suffices to save it from being
called by various critics harsh, tasteless, unpalatable, most

184 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

mawkish, vapid, and insipid. Turner, in 1568, says “it
is a fruyt of small honor.”’ It is, however, not by any means
despised by the thrushes, blackbirds, and other feathered
visitors. Pliny, Dioscorides, and other early writers warn
their disciples against eating the fruit too freely.

Very few “‘vertues” are ascribed to the tree. One old
writer, however, goes so far as to declare that a water
distilled from its leaves is “a sacred preservative and
antidote against the plague and poisons.” If this be alone
its plea for recognition to our gratitude it is surely ample.

Why the Romans called the strawberry-tree the arbutus’
does not appear. They also called it the uedo, and these
two classical names have been placed in juxtaposition and
made the present botanical name of the plant. Both these
names are used by Pliny, and he explains the latter by
declaring that the fruit appeals to one’s taste so little that it
is a case of wnus, one, and edo, I eat, that being all you-
need-o !

BUTCHER’S BROOM (Ruscus AcuLEatus)

The Butcher’s Broom, Ruscus aculeatus, though
singularly modest and retiring looking from the dull green
of its stems and foliage, is a plant of considerable interest,
from the peculiar position of the flowers, the blossom
rising on a short stalk from the centre of the leaf. The
flowers appear in April, some being stamen-bearing, others
pistil-bearing. They are diminutive in size and of a dull

1 Horace, for instance, has the line “ Nunc viridi membra sub arbuto stratus,”
stretched beneath the verdant arbutus. The reference to its desirability as a

resting-place derives its force from the shade-giving powers of the tree. We
find Virgil, too, referring to its value as a shelter from the sun.

BUTCHER'S BROOM 185

greenish-white colour, looking like little stars affixed to the
leaves, and as the leaves are considerably larger, and of a
dark sombre green they form an excellent background for
their display. The foliage is evergreen, very rigid in
character, and terminating in a very acute point. The
plant was called by the ancient Greeks the flowering myrtle,
a shrub it considerably resembles. In Germany it is the
Myrtendorn, while in France its prickly character has earned
it the name of petit Houx, little holly. This prickly foliage,
plus its rigid and much-branching stems, account for one
of its old English names, the knee-holm, while its more
common popular name arises from its former use in
cleansing the blocks of the butchers, for which its stiff
character and the scarifying action of its leaves would make
it well suited.

In the early Autumn the three-celled berries appear in
the places vacated by the pistilliferous flowers. The berries
are of a bright scarlet colour and as large as small cherries,
These, therefore, from colour and size are very conspicuous,
and, like the flowers, are excellently displayed by the sombre
leaves that serve as a foil to their brilliancy of colouring,
This fruit is rather sweet and agreeable to the taste, but it
is not prudent to indulge at all freely in it.

The butcher’s broom is found fairly commonly on
heathy ground, and in hedges and woods in the south and
west of England, and especially on a gravelly soil. Its
young shoots have been commended as a welcome sub-
stitute for asparagus, but the plant, as one ordinarily sees
it, looks about as tempting a delicacy as scrap-iron.

186 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

THORN APPLE (Datura StTRaMoNIuUM)
Though the Thorn Apple, the subject of Plate XXX.,

possesses absolutely no claim to rank as one of our indigenous
plants, it is not uncommonly met with throughout southern
England on waste ground, by the country roadsides, and
on rubbish heaps, and it has been fully enrolled amongst
our wild plants. Of no other wild plant can we speak so
definitely as to its claims to be a native or otherwise, for
we know that it was introduced into England in 1590 ;
it is on record who sent its seeds, and where from, and
to whom they were sent. It is found in nearly all
temperate and sub-tropical countries, and is as much at
home in the New World as the Old.

Why it should be called the thorn apple our
illustration amply attests. In the United States it is in
many parts of the country one of the commonest of plants.
Botanically it is the Datura Stramonium, Datura being
applied to it by Linneus from its Arab name. Linneus,
himself a Swede, received specimens of this and other
plants from his fellow countryman, Forskal, a naturalist
who, at the cost of the King of Denmark, went
on a scientific expedition into Egypt and Arabia. The
specimens he sent home had their Arabic names appended
to them, and in this particular case the Eastern name was,
practically, adopted. Hence, from this scientific title
datura, an old English name for the plant is the dewtry ;
we find it, for example, thus called in the pages of
Hudibras ; the illustrative passage is, from the context,
unfortunately unquotable. The herbalists of Italy called
the plant stramonia, but why they did so does not

THORN APPLE

THORN APPLE 187

quite clearly appear. It is also often in England called
the stramonium. Harte, for instance, a little-known poet,
in dwelling on the plants that grew around the door of
the Palace of Death, writes—

Nor were the Nightshades wanting, nor the power

Of thorned Stramonium, nor the sickly flower

Of cloying Mandrakes, the deceitful root

Of the monk’s fraudful cowl.!

The thorn-apple has a many-branched, herbaceous
stem, and rises to a height of some two feet or so. The
plant is an annual. The leaves are large and angular, and
of a dark green colour, the veins on them being strongly
marked. They are very irregular in form, no two being
alike. In our illustration we only give the upper leaves of
a stem ; the lower leaves would be quite six inches long.
The whole plant when bruised has a nauseous smell.

The flowers are tubular in form, or, rather, funnel-
shaped, as they expand widely at their mouths. They are
about three inches long, and pure white in colour, rising
from a long, tubular calyx, pale green in colour, and
acutely pentangular. The whole plant is very poisonous,
and so it is regarded with disfavour, but justice is justice
after all, and one must admit that the flowers are quaintly
elegant and attractive.”

The fruit is a large, erect, egg-shaped capsule, thickly
covered with blunt spines. It is at first green, but on the

1 This last line is a paraphrase for the monk’s-hood, another poisonous
plant, ‘Tis not the cowl,” the proverb tells us, ‘‘ that makes the monk.”

? This dangerous narcotic plant clothes itself with such an elegant
indented foliage, and garnishes its branches with corollas of such graceful
and negligent a shape, and of so pure a white, that all suspicion of its
deleterious nature seems lulled to rest, whilst, like the Lamiz of old, its
charms only allure that its powers may destroy.—PuHiL.ips, Flora Historica.

188 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

ripening of the seeds turns more or less brown, and finally
dries and withers into a strong sepia colour. In one of
our examples in the illustration the capsule is green and
yet closed, and in the other we see its valves opening for
the approaching dispersion of the mature seeds, while the
section across the fruit shows how beautifully these seeds
are packed away in the capsule. The seeds, it will be
seen, are very numerous, and, if gathered jin their ripe
state, germinate very freely in one’s garden. They are
the most powerfully deleterious part of a very dangerous
plant, though those who are so foolish as to eat the seeds
or boil the leaves for dinner should scarcely throw all the
blame on the thorn apple. A case is on record of a
child who eat some of these seeds and subseq uently became
blind and mad, snapping at those about her and shrieking
terribly.

The medical value of the thorn-apple has _ been
greatly extolled, but while such a plant, in the hands of
experienced and skilled practitioners, may prove of benefit,
the utmost caution is even then necessary in its use, while
in the hands of the ignorant it is very terrible in its effects.
In one case recorded in the medical books a man made a
decoction from two of the capsules, soaking them in milk,
and on dosing himself suffered from paralysis of the whole
body, and became delirious. After some hours he fell
into a sound sleep, and presently recovered his senses and
retained his life. It is probable that after this experience
he let thorn apple severely alone. It is not at all a plant
for amateur doctors to meddle with, but in the hands of
the physicians it has its uses, one of the best known of these
being the employment of its dried leaves for the relief of

HENBANE 189

asthma. A prescription that has been well commended
for the relief of this distressing ailment is a mixture in
equal parts of powdered lobelia, stramonium leaves, nitrate
of potash, and black tea. This being well mixed and
sifted must be placed in a saucer and ignited, the invalid
inhaling the resulting smoke.

HENBANE (Hyoscyamus NIGER)

A plant equally dangerous, and growing in the same
sort of places as the thorn apple, is the Henbane. It
thrives especially upon chalk or sand, and appears to be
especially partial to the neighbourhood of the sea. We
have found it, for instance, on the chalk downs at the back
of Brighton, and came across a particularly fine plant of it
in the front garden of an empty house along the sea front
at Worthing. It claims a place in our regard in these
present pages from the curious nature of its fruit.

The stem of the henbane is from one to three feet
high, a good deal branching, and rather thickly clothed
with clasping leaves. These are of a pale dull green, what
our ancestors would describe as sad-coloured, covered with
soft hairs, malodorous. The whole plant is covered with
foetid, glandular, viscid hairs, and is generally uncanny and
unwholesome-looking. Culpeper, we see, assigns it to
Saturn. *

To our ancestors the influence of the stars on human

! Much of superstition was imported into plant-study in earlier days, and
one of the forms it took was a belief in the influence of the stars upon
plants. Such a plant as the henbane, we see, was deemed saturnine;
hellebore again “‘is an herb of Saturn, and therefore no marvel if it has some
sullen conditions with it.” Many other plants were under the same malign
influence, while others were under the dominion of Jupiter, Venus, Mars, and

190 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

life and the affairs of men was a very real thing indeed, and
those who claimed the power of reading the celestial signs
had abundant opportunities of having their skill tested.
Lilly was perhaps one of the best known of these, and in
his book—our copy, we see, bears the date 1659—gives us
great cause for wonderment at the credulity of the age in
which he lived. Winstanly’s Book of Knowledge is also a
book to refer to for those interested in such matters. It
ran through many editions; our copy is that of 1685.
One can scarcely imagine that a man having lost his dog
would desire the starry heavens to be searched for its
recovery, yet this was one of the tasks that Lilly was set
to perform, and he tells us, as follows, how he fared :
‘““The Quere unto me was, what part of the City they
should search ; next, if he should ever recover him. The
sign of Gemini is west and by south, the quarter of heaven
is west ; Mercury, the significator of the Dog, is in Libra,
a western} sign, but southern quarter of heaven, tending to
the west. The moon is in Virgo, a south-west sign, and
verging to the western angle; the strength of the
testimonies examined I found the plurality to signifie the
west, and therefore I judged that the Dog ought to be
westward from the place where the Owner lived, which was
at Temple Barre ; wherefore I iudged that the Dog was
about Long Acre or upper part of Drury Lane. In regard
that Mercury, significator of the beast, was in a sign of the
same triplicity that Gemini his ascendant is, which signifies
other stars, Even as in the days of the week we yet preserve the memories
of the gods of our Saxon forefathers, so in the colloquialism of to-day we
retain a far-off echo of those old astrological beliefs, people being yet

dubbed jovial, mercurial, or saturnine, while some unfortunately are lunatic,
for they have come beneath the evil sway of the moon.

HENBANE Ig

London, and did apply to a Trine aspect of the cusp of the
sixt house, 1 iudged the Dog was not out of the lines of
communication, but in the same quarter ; of which I was
more confirmed by the Sun and Saturn, their Trine aspect.
The signe wherein Mercury is in is Libra, an ayery signe.
I judged the Dog was in some chamber or upper room
kept privately or in great secrecy ; because the moon was
under the Beames of the sun, and Mercury, Moon, and
Sun, were in the eight house, but because the Sun on
Monday following did apply by Trine dexter to Saturn,
Lord of the ascendant, and Moon to Sextile of Mars ;
having exaltation in the ascendant, I intimated that in my
opinion he should have his Dog againe, or newes of his
Dog upon Monday following, or neer that time ; which
was true; for a gentleman of the querem’s acquaintance
sent him the Dog the very same day about ten in the
morning, who by accident coming to see a friend in Long
Acre, found the Dog chained up under a table, and sent
him home as above said, to my very great credit.”

The henbane is in flower from the beginning of June,
the corolla being somewhat funnel-shaped in form, and of
a dingy pale yellow colour veined with dull purple. The
flowers are arranged in a long succession of blossoms at
the extremities of the stems, and all turn in one direction,
these stems being somewhat pendulous. The calyx is
tubular and five-cleft, and very strongly veined, and firmly
enclosed within this we presently, after the passing away
of the blossom, find the capsular fruit. This is two-celled,
and opens very curiously, when the seeds have come to
maturity, by means of a convex lid. The capsule is
many-seeded, and these seeds ripen some time between,

192 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

August and October. The plant is an annual. As
there is a long succession of blossoms to be gradually
expanded along the stem, so there is naturally, a long
succession of capsules to be gradually ripened. As the
capsules develop, so the enclosed calyx increases in size
and becomes more woody in its nature. A branch of
henbane capsules lends itself very readily to skeletonising ;
and when we come across any group of skeleton leaves
we shall ordinarily find with them the capsules of the
poppy and the henbane.

To those who would like to try some skeletonising we
would advise the gathering of the material, leaves or fruits,
in the Autumn, as at this season the fibrous substance is
strong and firm, and less likely to break than if gathered
earlier. Leaves of a resinous nature should be avoided,
as they will neither become amenable to treatment nor allow
others with which they are placed to do so. The selected
material should be placed in a large shallow pan into which
a sufficient amount of boiling rain-water to cover the leaves
is poured. The use of boiling rather than of cold water
is that it quickly destroys the vitality of the plants. The
pan must then be placed for some six weeks in the open
air in a position where it will get plenty of sunshine, fresh
rain-water being added as evaporation renders it necessary.
The things should be gently stirred from time to time, and
when they are seen to be shedding their epidermis they
must be placed individually beneath a tap and gently washed
in slowly running water: those that are found to be not
yet ripe for treatment are returned for a while to the pan.
To bleach them they must be exposed to the fumes of
sulphur, or washed in chloride of lime.

HENBANE 193

To those who fear that their patience and enthusiasm
may not be equal to this six weeks’ strain another method
may be suggested. Dissolve three ounces of washing-soda
in two pints of boiling water, adding to it an ounce and
a half of quick-lime. Let this be boiled for some ten
minutes and then decant the solution. When we are
ready with our leaves, boil this solution again, and as soon
as it is in a state of ebullition drop them in, boiling
them for an hour or so and being careful to add hot water
to repair loss from evaporation. The leaves should now be
easily skeletonised by gently manipulating them, one by one,
in a basin of warm water. When we are satisfied with our
work thus far it remains only to bleach, and this can readily
be effected by dropping each of the leaves or seed-vessels
for about ten minutes into a bath having the proportion
of one drachm of chloride of lime to one pint of water.

Yet a third way is to boil our material for about a
couple of minutes and then drop it all into a strong solution,
slightly warm, of permanganate of potash, and in an hour
or so the leaves may be carefully stripped of their epidermis
by means of a small brush and of much patience Diluted
sulphuric acid should be used to bleach them.

Botanically the henbane is the Hyoscyamus niger. The
generic name is from the Greek words meaning hog and
bean, from a belief that swine will eat the plant, while the
popular name henbane is equally the statement of a belief
that fowls, if they value their lives, had better not.
Matthiolus' says that ‘fowls that have eaten the seeds

1 Matthiolus, his name stripped of its Latin dress, was Pietro Andrea
Mattioli, an Italian botanical writer of great repute in his day. He was
born in the year 1500. His chief work was his Commentaries on the
Materia Medica of Dioscorides.

“3

194 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

perish soon after, as do fishes also.” On the other hand,
the older English writers call the plant the henbell, and it
is so far back as the Anglo-Saxon lists the henne-belle. It
has been conjectured that the “bell” has reference to the
somewhat bell-like form of the enlarged calyx, but this is
always seen on the plant in a position that throws its mouth
upwards, not at all a bell-like position. Still, in favour of
this view we must mention that another old name for the
plant is the symphoniaca, a name derived from the
symphonia, a series of bells of varying sizes suspended
from a beam and struck by a hammer. This throws no
light on the “hen,” and the probability is that we are
on the wrong track altogether, and that the name has
no reference at all to hen, or bell, or bane in the sense
we ordinarily attach to those words. Prior, in his book on
the names of our British plants, gets so far as introducing
a Celtic deity, Belenus, as sponsor.

The henbane has for many centuries been held in
high repute as a narcotic, soporific, and anodyne, and
yet holds its position in the Pharmacopceia. Gerard,
we note, says that “the leaves, seed and iuyce taken
inwardly causeth an vnquiet sleepe like vnto the sleepe
of drunkenesse, which continueth long, and is deadly
to the party.” This suggests the thought that perhaps
henbane is best left alone.

That the plant may legitimately be called the bean of
the hog seems as open to question as that it be considered
the bane of the hen. One venerable authority declares
that “swine having fed thereon, are very much disturbed
thereby, yea, are in danger of their lives, if they wallow
not themselves in water presently thereupon: neither do

DWALE 195

they go into the water to wash themselves, but to seek
after Crevises, by the eating of which they recover.” These
crevises are what we nowadays call cray-fish, in French
écrevisse. Whereupon another venerable authority says :
“For my part I can scarcely allow of this, because I never
saw any hogs feed upon this plant, much lesse to go into
the Rivers to catch Crevise : for in the mire wherein they
commonly wallow there be none.”’

According to the Doctrine of Signatures “the Husk
wherein the seed of Henbane is contained is in figure like
to a Jaw-tooth, and therefore the Oyle of it, or the Juyce
of it by it self, being gargled warm in the mouth is very
effectuall in easing the pains of the Teeth.”

DWALE (Arropa BELLApoNNA)

In the Dwale, or Deadly Nightshade, Plate XXXI., we
have yet another plant possessed of the most powerful
properties, and therefore to be dealt with with all due
caution. It may from time to time be found, and especially
on a chalky soil, and it would no doubt be much more
common than it is, were it not for its evil repute, which
results in its eradication, and its medicinal value, which
leads to any stray plant being carried off at sight by the
herbalists. The plant may often be found near the ruins
of our ancient abbeys and monastic houses, and it is very
reasonably suggested that in many cases its occurrence is
a survival from the old herb gardens of the monks.

The dwale grows ordinarily some two to three feet
high, though we have seen it quite four feet in height.
The branches have a way of drooping towards their

196 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

extremities. One is bound to confess, its evil repute
notwithstanding, that it is distinctly, in its fruiting stage,
a striking and handsome plant. One curious feature is
that the leaves, while growing in pairs, are very unequal
in size; their veining is very strongly marked, and they
are of a very deep green in colour.

The flowers are of a curiously lurid and unwholesome-
looking dull purple colour, grow singly on the stems, and
aré often more or less pendent. The plant may be found
in flower from about June to August. The berries,
ripening in September, stand out very effectively from the
five-pointed star made by the calyx segments of brilliant
green at their bases. They have a very glossy, polished
surface, and are of a rather sweetish taste. Their attractive
character, looking as they do to the uncritical eyes of
young children like cherries or big black currants, has led
to many serious accidents. In the lower portion of our
illustration we see one of these berries cut open, and
showing the seeds all packed carefully away within it.
The making of these fruit sections is often very interest-
ing, and the results illustrate to the full a statement that
we made some few pages back, that in Nature nothing
falls into its place by chance, but that all is the outcome
of a wonderful order and system.

For those who have lunched “not wisely but too
well,” off these fruits of the dwale, the following un-
comfortable consequences may be predicted—a complete
loss of voice, continuous restless motion, an inability to
swallow, but yet a great feeling of thirst, the vision
impaired, a catching at imaginary objects, delirium passing
presently into insensibility, and, finally, death.

DWALE 197

Botanically the plant is the tropa Belladonna, a
curious combination introducing the name of the most
dreaded of the Fates, Atropos, whose function it was to
cut the thread of human life,' and the Italian words
signifying beautiful lady. The first, in view of the very
dangerous nature of the plant, calls for no explanation ;
while the second, the specific title, refers to the use that
was made of the plant in Italy and elsewhere, as an aid
to beauty, the herb, deadly as it is, being employed from
its curious property of dilating the eyes, or as a cosmetic
for the complexion. The old English name, dwale, is
probably from the Dutch word dwaelen, to be delirious,
though it has also been asserted that we derive it from the
French dewil, mourning. Amongst the suggestive names
we find attached to the plant by the early writers are
lethale, furiosum, and maniacum.

The root, the leaves, the fruit, all possess very active
properties that, misdirected, may lead, as we have seen,
to fatal consequences, but which find their valued place
in medical practice. When one falls a victim to lumbago
a large belladonna plaster will be found of benefit, and
some belladonna liniment well rubbed in is of great
efficacy in relieving muscular pains, while a tincture of

1 The lands and the riches that here we possesse
be none of our owne, if a God we professe,
But lent vs of him, as his talent of gold,
which being demanded, who can it withhold ?

God maketh no writing that iustly doth say
how long we shall haue it, a yeere or a day
But leaue it we must (how soeuer we leeue)
when Atrop shall pluck vs from hence by the sleeue.

TussER, Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie, 1573.

198 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

the plant often allays the oppression of asthma. Atropine,
a preparation obtained from the root, is a well-known
agent that, amongst divers other uses, is largely employed
by oculists for dilating the pupil of the eye, to aid them
in operations for cataract and other eye troubles. It is
probably to the dwale that Shakespeare refers in the
well-known passage, “ Have we eaten of the insane root
that takes the reason prisoner?” It is curious that
horses, sheep, rabbits, goats, pigs browse on the foliage
with impunity, while many birds find in the berries a
welcome food.

JUNIPER (Juniperus Communis)

On dry, barren hillsides,* sandy heaths, and open
woods,” or on the great expanses of our chalk downs,
one may find the Juniper flourishing and clothing the
waste places with a quaint and characteristic vegetation.
Though it may occasionally be found as a small tree it
is more ordinarily but a bush, anything, in fact, from
about six inches to four feet in height, according to the
bleakness or the sheltered nature of its position. It is also
liable to be considerably grazed down whilst still young
and tender, by sheep, and it is, as the hardness of the
conditions under which we usually find it would lead
one to expect, a rather slow-growing plant.

1 And where low-tufted broom,
Or box, or berry’d juniper arise.
Dyer, “ The Fleece,”
2 Our woods with juniper and chestnuts crown’d,
With falling fruit and berries paint the ground;

And lavish Nature laughs, and strews her stores around,
DrybDeEn, ‘Seventh Pastoral.”

JUNIPER 199

We read in the Bible how Elijah fled into the wilderness
of Beersheba from the face of King Ahab, and how he lay and
slept under a juniper-tree, and the plant is also mentioned
in divers other places in the Scriptures, but the word as
translated is wrongly given. The Biblical juniper, a desert
shrub growing some ten feet in height, is in reality a
kind of broom, that, as in the days of the prophet, affords
welcome shelter to the weary and sun-smitten traveller.

The juniper is very rigid in its general growth and
much branched, this rigidity and angularity of growth,
this throwing out of many small branches rather than a
few larger ones, being a marked feature in plants exposed
to the sweeping blasts that search the bleak hillside, and a
necessary result of the hardness of the conditions against
which they have to contend. When the wood attains to a
workable size it is in considerable request for veneering,
and for the fabrication of small fancy wares of one sort
or another, being very hard, very pleasantly aromatic, of a
fine red colour, beautifully veined, and taking an excellent
polish.

The leaves of the juniper are evergreen, very numerous,
long in proportion to their width, and arranged in spread-
ing groups of three together. They are so rigid as to be
almost spiny in character, of a greyish colour above, and
of a dark green on their under-surfaces, a curious reversal
of what one finds to be the general rule in foliage, that
the lower surfaces are lighter than the upper.

The stamen-bearing flowers are in small ovoid catkins
on one plant, and the pistillate flowers in small globose
catkins on another, the flowering season being in Spring.
The individual flowers are very minute, but the general

200 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

colour-effect is whitish-yellow, and the staminate flowers
give forth large quantities of yellow pollen.

The berries are globular in form, and of a dark purple-
black, but covered with a greyish bloom. They are about
the size of a large pea, and each, when opened, is found
to contain three hard seeds. They remain for two years
on the plant, the first year remaining green and the second
ripening into black, so that we find examples of each
condition at the same time. One old author, whom we
may perhaps, without fear of the law of libel, call more
fanciful than reliable, would persuade us that the plant is
called juniper from junior, younger, and parere, to bring
forth, because “as the first berries be ripe, it bringeth forth
younger and junior berries to them.”

The berries when tasted have a warm, pungent, sweetish
taste, and a fragrant essential oil is extracted from them.
Before pepper was so readily obtainable as it is to-day our
ancestors employed the ripe, dry, crushed seeds of the
juniper as a substitute, and this is still a good deal used
in matters culinary in Germany and elsewhere abroad.
The berries have also been employed, when roasted, in
place of coffee, or used for fumigatory purposes in hospital
wards. We read in a book over three hundred years old
that on being burned “the Wood of Juniper yieldeth a
very sweet scent which freeth from Infection, and driveth
away all Noisesome Serpents, Flies, Waspes, &c.” Many
birds, thrushes, grouse, and others, are very partial to these
berries. It is, however, as a flavouring to Geneva, a baleful
liquid that has had its name in England abbreviated to gin,’

! Phillips, in his Companion to the Orchard, writes somewhat pungently
“So much is the flavour of the berries admired by the lower orders of

JUNIPER 201

that these juniper berries find chief employment. They
are largely collected in Savoy, Austria, and elsewhere
throughout the Continent, and hundreds of tons of them
find their way annually to Holland and England, the great
seats of the manufacture of this Hollands or Geneva.

Why this stuff made in Holland should be called
Hollands seems fairly evident, but why it should be also
known as Geneva does not so immediately appear. The
problem, however, is not a geographical one at all. Gin
is so called because the plant we call juniper is in Holland
the genever. It is in France the geniévre, and in Italy
the ginepro. In France a bright sparkling beverage called
genévrette is produced by fermenting equal parts of juniper
berries and barley together.

It was for centuries a custom in many parts of
Europe, and it doubtless still holds, to‘place a few of
these aromatic juniper branches on the fire to drive away
evil spirits and shield the house from witchcraft, and
they are also employed for the more prosaic duty of
‘smoking hams.

Preparations from juniper are still officinal and take their
place amongst the paraphernalia of the modern doctor,
but their use is small indeed as compared with their ancient
and medieval reputation. Mithridates, the renowned king
of Pontus, took each morning, as an antidote against in-
fection or poison, twenty leaves of rue, a little salt,
two walnuts, two figs, and twenty juniper berries, all
beaten up together! Such a prescription had need possess

Londoners, that it would be difficult to name any complaint that they would
not be afflicted with for the sake of a plentiful supply of the cordial to which
it is imparted.”

202 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

sovereign virtue as some set-off against its horrible
nastiness. ‘The Berries of Juniper being boyled,” we
are advised by one of these venerable herbalists, in ‘“‘ Wine
or Honeyed Water, and drunk, is an effectuall remedy
for Chollick, but especially the Chimicall Oyle drawn
from the berries, foure or five drops thereof being taken
in a Morning in Broth or Beere, and ten or a dozen of
the ripe Berries eaten every Morning fasting. The Berries
taken in Wine are very effectuall against the biting of Vipers
or Adders, as also against the Plague or Pestilence, or
any other Infection or Poyson. They are good for the
Cough. Shortnesse, of Breath, Convulsions, or Cramps.
They strengthen the Braine, helpe the Memory exceed-
ingly, and fortify the Sight.” Reference to any of these
old authors, from Pliny and Dioscorides right through
the centuries to Gerard, or Parkinson, and their fellows,
would readily supply us with any number of addi-
tional testimonies to the healing value of the juniper,
but we may be content to judge from sample and not
insist on more, especially as these old writers had a
terrible way of copying from each other, and while we
think we are gathering the wisdom of Lyte or Culpeper
we are really getting at much more than second-hand the
fancies of Hippocrates or Theophrastus, Galen or Aristotle.

MISTLETOE (Viscum Atsum)

Mistletoe, the subject of our thirty-second Plate, and
the Viscum album of the botanist, must surely be a plant
so well known that any elaborate description of it appears
almost a mockery, a slight on the powers of observation.

MISTLETOE

MISTLETOE 203

of our readers. From its early connexion with Druidic
worship and its exceptional mode of growth, the plant
has been regarded as more than a little uncanny, while
on the other hand, its intimate association in later days
with the festivities of social life’ have given it a special
interest. Though, however, we claim for these later days
a use of the mistletoe that is wholly secular, purely social,
having as its end and aim alone decorative charm and
innocent happiness, there can be but little doubt that
this modern application of it is based on a custom that
has lasted through the centuries from the days when,
at the conclusion of the rites of Druidism, the sacred
plant was distributed amongst the worshippers and by
them suspended in their homes as a charm against all
evil things. Hence the plant has been always under the
ban of this old association with heathenism, and, amidst
the other plants that decorate the church at the great
Festival of the Birth of Christ, the mistletoe finds no place.
This ancient connexion with pagan worship might now well
be forgiven it, but the exceptional associations connected

1 And well our Christian sires of old
Loved when the year its course had rolled,
And brought blithe Christmas back again
With all his hospitable train.
Domestic and religious rite
Gave honour to the holy night ;
On Christmas-eve the bells were rung ;
On Christmas-eve the mass was sung;
That only night, in all the year,
Saw the stoled priest the chalice rear.
The damsel donned her kirtle sheen;
The hall was dressed with holly green;
Forth to the wood did merry men go,
To gather in the mistletoe.

Scorr.

204 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

with its secular use have since grown up and its employ-
ment in the church might not tend to edification, or
awaken thoughts altogether adapted to the genius loci
when seen suspended in close proximity to the family
pew. It is just one of those cases that sometimes arise
where things lawful are not always expedient, and so,
while holly and ivy and laurel and their fellows find
ready entrance at the church door the mistletoe must be
content to remain outside.

Hence, too, in our old cathedrals and stately churches,
while the stone carving, in the capitals and elsewhere,
shows loving appreciation of natural beauty in the abundant
presentment of oak, maple, hawthorn, ivy, buttercup,
and many other plants of charming decorative service,
we know of but one example of the use of the mistletoe,
and are greatly surprised that there should be even that
one. It may be seen carved on a tomb in Bristol Cathedral.
The mistletoe has really great decorative possibilities, and
we wonder that it has not found a readier use amongst
our designers.

Herrick, full of quaint fancy, finding ever valuable
lessons in the commonest and most unlikely things, sees
in this neglected mistletoe a beautiful emblem of his
dependence upon the care of Providence—

Lord, I am like the mistletoe,
Which has no root, and cannot grow,

Or prosper, save by that same tree
It clings about; so I by Thee.

The mistletoe belongs to a family that is chiefly tropical,
and is an excellent illustration of a parasite, a plant de-
riving its nourishment and power of growth from some

MISTLETOE 205

other plant. While one’s ideas as to parasites, human or
otherwise, do not err on the side of special esteem for
them, it was just this parasitic character that gave this
plant its sacredness in the eyes of the Druidic priesthood,
since, unlike all other plants, it was not born of earth
and its defilements, but was a sacred heaven-born thing,
and, when found growing upon the sacred oak, was
regarded as a direct gift of the gods to man.

The mistletoe is found growing, more or less freely,
on many different kinds of trees, as the aspen, pear, alder,
maple, rowan, hazel, ash, sycamore, medlar, plane, horse-
chestnut, service, acacia, walnut, poplar, lime, hawthorn,
even the dog-rose and azalea, but more especially on the
apple. In some old neglected orchards almost every tree
may be seen bearing it, and its effect on the tree is
wholly prejudicial.2 The mistletoe is a very hardy plant,
and when it has once got possession retains it, neither
boisterous wind nor hard frost seeming to hurt it at all.

Only a very few authentic cases are on record of the
growth of the mistletoe upon the oak, and this great
rarity of occurrence would, naturally, greatly increase the
reverence for it wherever so found. We must remember,
however, when we dwell on its extreme rarity, that in

1 Theophrastus maintained that mistletoe was an exudation from the trees
it was found on—" Quasi cornua ex ossibus animalium.”

? “There is a great Deficiency in the ordering of Orchards, in that they
are not well pruned, but full of Mosse, Mistletoe, and Suckers,” as we read
in The Compleat Husbandman, or a Discourse of the whole Art of Husbandry,
both Forraign and Domestick, “wherein many rare and most hidden Secrets
and Experiments are laid open to the view of all, for the enriching of these
Nations,” the scraping away of the mistletoe off the apple-trees being one
of these. The book was written by one Samuel Hartlib, and published
“at the Crane in Paul’s Churchyard ” in 1659.

206 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

earlier days the greater part of our land was covered with
forest, and that the far greater number of oak-trees then
than now would give corresponding increase of possibility
of finding oak-grown mistletoe. Some writers declare that
it was not the mistletoe at all, but another parasitic plant
of the same family, the Loranthus Europeus, that was
really the sacred plant. This is a common enough plant
on the Continent, growing on oak and other trees, but it
is not found in England. This hard fact of its non-
occurrence here certainly appears at first glance a fatal blow
to the Loranthus theory, but those who uphold the belief get
over the awkward fact by asserting that on the suppression
of Druidism, every vestige of this plant, owing to its
association with the old pagan rites, was extirpated, and so
England knows it no more. This extirpation, however,
would be an exceedingly difficult operation, even when we
have made full allowance for new-born religious zeal. If
we could imagine the Archbishop of Canterbury thundering
forth anathemas against the foxglove, for instance, as
a plant wholly diabolic, and, stranger still, carrying the
whole nation with him in his denunciations, the doom
of Digitalis Satanica would be by no means sealed, and
it would be altogether premature to conclude that the time
had come when its name should be erased from our Flora.
Vullamy, in his Grammar of the Irish Language, asserts
that the Druid veneration for the mistletoe arose from
reverence for the number three, not only the berries of the
plant, he declares, growing in triplets, but also the leaves.
One weak point in this statement is that there appears to
be no proof forthcoming from him or any other writers as
to this sacredness amongst the Druids of the number three,

MISTLETOE 207

while a second is that the berries of the mistletoe cluster
together in groups of varying number, and the leaves are
in pairs !

Pliny, discoursing in his book centuries ago on the
mistletoe, is also our one authority, Vullamy notwith-
standing, on its association with Druidism, and we trust
that the following quotation’ from his writings may be
forgiven its length on account of its interest :

“‘ Forasmuch as wee are entred into a discourse as touch-
ing Misselto I cannot overpasse one strange thing thereof.
The Druidz (for so they call their Divinours, Wise Men,
and the State of their Clergie) esteeme nothing in the world
more sacred than Misselto, and the tree whereon it breedeth,
so it be on Oke. Now this you must take by the way.
There Priests or Clergiemen chose of purpose such groues
for their divine Service, as stood onely upon Okes; nay they
solemnize no sacrifice nor perform any sacred ceremonies with-
out branches and leaves thereof, as they may seem to be well
enough named therein Dryide in Greeke, which signifyeth
as much as the Oke Priests. Certes, to say a truth, what-
ever they find growing vpon that tree over and besides its
owne fruit, be it Misselto or any thing else, they esteeme
it is a gift sent from Heaven, and a sure signe by which
that very God whome they serve giveth them to under-
stand, that he hath chosen that particular tree, And, no
marveile, for in very deed Misselto is passing scarce, and
hard to be found vpon the Oke; but when they meete
with it they gather it very devoutly and with many
ceremonies ; for first and foremost they observe principally

‘ Our translation is that of Philemon Holland, given to the world in the
year 1601, a book full of delightful quaintness of language and expression,

208 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

that the moone be just six daies old, because shee is thought
then to be of great power and force sufficient. They call it
in their language All-Heale, for they have an opinion that
it cureth all maladies soever, and when they are about to
gather it, after they have well and duly prepared their
sacrifices and festivall cheare vnder the said tree, they
bring hither two young bullocks milke white, such as
never yet drew at plough or waine, which done, the Priest
arrayed in a surplesse or white vesture, climbeth vp into
the tree, and with a golden hook or bill cutteth it off, and
they beneath receive it in a white souldiours cassocke or
coat of armes: then fall they to kill the beastes aforesaid
for sacrifice, mumbling many oraisons and praying devoutly
that it would please God to blesse this gift of his to the
good of all those to whom he had given it. So vain
and superstitious are many nations in the world, and often-
times in such frivolous and foolish things as these.”

The mistletoe was known to the Anglo-Saxons as the
mistiltan, a word derived from mist/, different, and ‘an,
a twig, indicating its parasitic nature, and its unlikeness
to the tree upon which it is found, and it appears to us
distinctly interesting that amidst the momentous changes,
social, political, and religious, that have taken place since
Anglo-Saxon days this word should have been handed
down, generation after generation, practically unchanged.
In Germany it is the Miste/, and in France the gui de
chéne, the latter name asserting a distinctive association
with the oak that facts, as we have seen, do not
bear out.

The mistletoe grows very freely in many districts in
the south and west of England, but the home production

MISTLETOE 209

is by no means adequate to the Christmas demand for it,
for while numerous goods trains laden with absolutely
nothing else arrive from Herefordshire and elsewhere to
the all-demanding Metropolis, these supplies are largely
supplemented by steamboat cargoes from abroad. We have
seen the French boats arrive with their decks and holds
laden with crates of it, and the specially fine pieces that
it seemed a pity to pack or compress, tied all round the
rigging and waving in the breeze. A friend of ours, resident
some few years ago in Deans’ Yard, had a noble piece of
mistletoe growing on an old apple-tree in her garden,
almost under the shadow of Westminster Abbey, and it
is possibly there still. If any of our readers would like
to grow their own mistletoe, all that is necessary is to
take a ripe berry between one’s fingers, crush it so as
liberate the seed, and then press it into a crack of the
bark of the tree that is to play the part of host. This
crack must be on the under side of the bough, or the
rain may wash the seed away or some bird devour it.
Its growth begins with the first Spring, and in about
four years it will be a fine bushy mass, but we must
bear in mind that the more successful we are in our
growth of mistletoe the more effectually we are damaging
the tree upon which we place it, as its roots, branching
freely, penetrate into the very heart of the wood.1 The
mistletoe in destroying the tree brings about its own death.
If we find a tree that has been thus killed, we see on the
decay of the parasite that the wood of the host has been

1 The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean,
O’ercome with moss and baleful Misseltoe.
SHAKESPEARE.

14

210 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

bored and chambered out as by a teredo or the destructive
larva of the goat moth.

Paley, in his Natural Theology, utilises the mistletoe as
one of several instances that he gives of evidence of design
in nature. ‘‘ What we have to remark in it,” he writes,
‘is a singular instance of compensation. No art hath yet
made these plants take root in the earth. Here, therefore,
might seem to be a mortal defect in their constitution. Let
us examine how this defect is made up to them. The
seeds are endued with an adhesive quality so tenacious,
that if they be rubbed on the smooth bark of almost
any tree they will stick to it. And then what follows?
Roots springing from these seeds insinuate their fibres
into the woody substance of the tree ; and the event is
that a mistletoe plant is produced next winter. Of no
other plant do the roots refuse to shoot in the ground ;
of no other plant do the seeds possess this adhesive
generative quality, when applied to the bark of trees.”

The branches of the mistletoe become woody when old,
and are attached by a thickened base to the bough from
which they spring. They branch off very freely into pairs,
and form in the aggregate a compact rounded clump.
The leaves are thick, almost leathery in substance, in pairs,
and of a pale yellowish-green. The plant is in flower
in March, April, and May, the male and the female flowers
being on different plants. The males have four short,
thick petals widely spreading and triangular in form. In
the centre rise the four stamens. These staminate flowers
are from three to five together in a cup-shaped fleshy
bract. The pistillate flowers are solitary generally, though
sometimes two or three are together in a cup-like bract,

MISTLETOE 21

the petals being very minute, and the stigma sessile on the
summit of the one-celled ovary. To these pistillate flowers,
sedent in the forks of the stems, succeed in October the
white and semi-transparent globular berries, each containing
a single seed immersed in very glutinous pulp. Sheep
in time of dearth find the foliage very acceptable,’ while
the berries afford welcome food to field-fares, wood-
pigeons, and many other birds. If not lunched off by
a hungry bird, or otherwise interfered with, the berries
remain on the plant all through the winter; and as the
foliage of the mistletoe is always green, while the leaves
of its host fall away with the arrival of Autumn, it is
in the winter-time that the mistletoe is most conspicuous
and attractive.

A curiously similar plant is the cross-leaved mistletoe,
the viscum cruciatum of the botanist, a plant that may be
found freely enough around the shores of the Mediterranean
Sea. It is parasitic; and we have seen it springing from the
trees, its hosts, in vigorous spreading masses. The leaves
have the same yellowish colour and leathery texture as
those of the mistletoe we figure, and are of similar shape
and size, and it is only on examination that we detect
points of difference, the most notable feature being that the
berries are of a somewhat dull crimson-red colour. It is
not, we trust, wholly insular prejudice when we express our
preference for berries of the colour that our home-grown
mistletoe affords us.

Even in the days of such venerable practitioners as

1 If frost do continue, sheep hardly that fare
Craue mistle and ivie for them for to spare.
TUSSER.

212 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

Galen, Hippocrates, and Dioscorides, the medical virtues
of the mistletoe were highly extolled, and until quite
recent days its reputation remained unimpaired. In the
beginning of the fourteenth century we find it greatly
commended in a book called| Lilium Medicine as a specific
for epilepsy, either taken internally or suspended round
the neck,’ and many physicians of much later date have
had great faith in its remedial efficacy in this and kindred
affections.

Sir John Colbatch, a noted physician in the reign of
George I., wrote 4 Dissertation concerning Mistletoe, which
plant he claimed upon his title-page to be ‘a most
Wonderful Specifick Remedy, Calculated for the Benefit
of the Poor as well as the Rich, and heartily recommended
for the Common Good of Mankind.” The date on the
title-page is 1720.

“I have been,” he says in his preface, “many Years
a Debtor to the World, and since I have not as yet been
able to pay off my old Scores to my own Satisfaction, the
following Dissertation comes out by way of Composition ;
which I hope will be accepted in part of Payment, till
the original Debt can be discharged. That this came out
alone, is from an Impression that I have had upon my
Spirits for some Weeks past, that it would be highly
criminal in me to let another Mistletoe Season pass without
informing the World what a Treasure God Almighty has
every Year presented to their View; and that no body,
at least very few, have received any Benefit from it.

1 The mistletoe was by the monkish herbalists called the wood of the
Holy Cross, Lignum Sancte Crucis, so highly did they esteem its healing
powers.

MISTLETOE 213

The Article of Convulsions in the Bills of Mortality of
this great City, is by much the largest of any, very
commonly amounting to about a fifth Part of the whole,
from whence it seems plain that a General Anti-Convulsion
Remedy is wanting. I have publish’d the Noble Quauities
of this Wonderful Medicine in the most plain and familiar
manner, that thereby it may be rendered of more publick
Vse; and I am not without the greatest Hopes that
People of all Ranks will receive Benefit from it. I hope
I shall not be blamed for the Earnestness of my Recom-
mendation of this Neglected but Extraordinary Plant,
because my only Aim in so doing is to press People to the
Vse of that, which every Family may one time or other
receive Advantage from. The Performance is rough and
unpolish’d, but I have chosen rather to suffer Reproach
upon that account than let another Season slip, which
I am satisfied would be to the Detriment of many.”

The good old Doctor tells us how a terrible case of
epilepsy in “one that was most near and dear,” and that
for five years had baffled very attempt at alleviation, set
him on the alert for every possibility of remedy. “ Being
one day,” he tells us, “on a Journey I saw some Hazle Trees
plentifully stock’d with Mistletoe. It immediately enter’d
into my Mind that there must be something extraordinary
in that uncommon beautiful Plant: that the Almighty
had design’d it for further and more noble Vses than
barely to feed Thrushes, or to be hung up superstitiously
in Houses to drive away evil Spirits.

‘Tn reading the scatter’d and imperfect Accounts of the
Druids, formerly Priests and Philosophers in this Island
and other neighbouring Countries, who were held in the

214 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

highest Veneration by People of all Ranks, I conjectured
that this Veneration in great Measure proceeded from the
wonderful Cures they wrought by means of the Mistletoe.
But Mistletoe of the Oak being the only Mistletoe
recommended as good for anything, I was in great Straits
how to procure a quantity of it, for I did not remember
in all my Travels to have seen any of it: so amongst
all my Acquaintance I do not know that I have met
with above two that have.”

This set the Doctor experimenting on the practical
basis that if one cannot get what one wants one must
see what one can get, the highly satisfactory result being
that ‘‘ from ten Years large Experience I find the ordinary
Mistletoe to be the most noble Medicine I ever knew.
Mistletoe of the Oak not being to be obtained, I furnished
myself with a large quantity of that of the Lime, the
Trees in one of the Parks at Hampton Court affording
great Plenty.” The Doctor certainly gives very detailed
accounts of some very striking cures. There is no
suspicion of quackery or merely personal gain about his
pook, and it appears a pity that the matter should have
been allowed so entirely to drop out of sight, and with
this thought in our minds we are the less apologetic for
dealing at such length with it.

Culpeper declares the mistletoe to be under the dominion
of the sun, and “it can also be taken for granted that that
which grows upon oaks participates something of the
nature of Jupiter, because an Oak is one of his trees.” It
does not seem to have occurred to him that the fact of the
mistletoe preferring some twenty other trees to the oak
might perhaps make a little difference.

COLUMBINE 215

In the ancient forest laws of Howel Dda an ash-tree
is valued at fourpence, while a bough of mistletoe is
reckoned at thirty shillings, ninety times as much : we may
take it that nowadays this proportion is a good deal more
than reversed. About the only use that mistletoe can be
put to is to make bird-lime of it; but as we see in a book
before us that “it may very reasonably be doubted whether
any one was ever engaged in using that article whose time
could not have been better employed,” an expression of
opinion that we entirely agree with, it is scarcely worth
while to give a receipt for its manufacture.

COLUMBINE (Aguitecia Vutcaris)

Plate XXXIII. brings before us the flowers, foliage,
and fruit of the Columbine. Its claim to be considered
indigenous has been questioned, but it is found set down
in Anglo-Saxon plant lists as the cu/frewort, a word meaning
pigeon-plant ; ;and a plant that can show a recognition and
descent from at least the days of Egbert has very fairly
made out its claim for recognition in our Flora. The term
indigenous is, after all, a very vague one. When England
was under glacial conditions, a state of things that many an
ice-scored rock testifies to, or when England was under sub-
tropical conditions, a state of things that the coal-measures
clearly prove, was the columbine “in residence”? If Noah
in his famous voyage had drifted out so far west as this
would he have found it? If not, it] is, we presume, not
indigenous |

The whole plant is atfractive, whether we look at its

216 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

richly-cut foliage, the gaily-coloured and quaintly-formed
flowers, or the equally quaint form of its ring of fruits,
pod-like individually, but clustering together into a most
picturesque aggregation. The columbine flowers about
midsummer, but, continuing in bloom for a considerable
time, we get, as we have depicted, flower and fruit
simultaneously ; the fruiting stage being reached while
there are many flowers open or opening, and others
only yet in the promise of the bud. We have in our
illustration given the leaf in its Autumnal garb ;
during the flowering season it is of a dark bluish-green
colour.

It will be seen, by a glance at the lower blossom in
our illustration, or, better yet, by an inspection of a living
flower, that the blossom is singularly like a group of little
clustering birds, hence its name columbine, columba mean-
ing in Latin a dove. It is botanically the Aquilegia vulgaris.
The old writers also, amongst other names, call the plant
Aquileia, Aquilina, and Columbina. Some one centuries ago
thought that the clustering forms that suggest to others
the heads of doves were no less suggestive of the claws
of an eagle, in Latin, Aguila, but the name is by no means
so happy as the popular title. Some medieval folk of a
botanico-astrological turn of mind called our plant the Herda
leonis, “the herbe wherein the lion doth delight,” the
reference of course being not to the lion of the African
desert but to his confrére in the Zodiac, and to the time
of flowering of the plant.

In its wild state, dwelling in woods and coppices, and
on the railway banks, the columbine flower is of deep rich
purple colour, but it is a plant that lends itself to consider-

COLUMBINE

COLUMBINE 217

able variation under cultivation.’ ‘“ They are set and sowne,”
says Gerard, “in gardens for the beautie and variable colour
of the floures: sometimes blew, often white, and other
whiles of mixt colours, as nature list to play with her little
ones.” In the hands of the florists the spurs have been
in some varieties greatly modified, and extended to much
more than their normal size, thus giving the flowers a
charming quaintness of effect.

The columbine, from its deep purple colour, while it
was yet a wildling, and the gardeners had not metamorphosed
it? was the symbol of grief and desertion :

The columbine, by lonely wanderer taken,
Is then ascribed to such as are forsaken.

As such it presented itself to Brown, the author of

the British Pastorals, from whom we quote, but in almost

3

all symbolism a variation of significance is possible ;* and to

Drayton the flower is no emblem of the love-lorn, but a

! Bring hither the pink and purple Columbine,
With gylliflowers.
SPENSER.

The columbine was a favourite plant with Spenser. In his Garden of
Beauty, after dwelling on the rosy lips, the ruddy cheeks, and the beautiful
eyes of a certain fair damsel, he compares “her neck like to a bunch of
cullambines,” which seems to come perilously near bathos.

* In a florist’s catalogue before us we see that one variety is marked
as having blue, white, and yellow flowers; another with bright golden
blossoms ; another as being vermilion and yellow.

3 In symbolic colour, for instance, white may be the badge of perfect
purity or the emblem of craven fear. Red may be the emblem of glowing love
or of blood-thirsty cruelty. The peacock, now the emblem of worldly pride,
was for centuries the symbol of the Resurrection, and the lion may be the
emblem of the Lion of the tribe of Judah, of St. Mark the evangelist, of royal
magnanimity, or the symbol of Satan himself seeking whom he may by
treacherous wiles and ambuscade devour.

218 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

rich adornment for the love-favoured, the love-bestowing
fair one, who shall have bestowed upon her “a goodly
chaplet of azured columbine,” while her coronet shall be
wreathed with sweetest eglantine, and all goodly things
pressed into the service to do her honour.

The columbine was, like the better-known badge of
the broom, one of the heraldic cognisances of the royal
House of Plantagenet. One finds it sometimes in old stained-
glass illuminations and the like, as the device of divers
nobles. It may be seen, for instance, in an easily accessible
example, in the spandrils of the brass of Sir Peter Courtenay
in Exeter Cathedral. He died in the sixth year of the
reign of King Henry IV.

The fruit of the columbine is constructed of five carpels
grouped together, and these we find, on opening them, to
be full of smooth, dark, shining seeds. These seed re-
ceptacles presently open of themselves on maturity, and
the seeds fall to the ground. They germinate very freely,
so that the plant, once fairly established, is not easily
dispossessed of its holding.

In one portion of our garden it is our delight to
grow divers plants that we have transported from hedge
or moorland, river-bank or forest. Here may be
found primroses, foxgloves, wild geraniums, alkanet,
coltsfoot, the celandines, strawberry, grass of Parnassus,
yellow iris, snapdragon, stone-crop, cinquefoil, Solomon’s
seal, lilies of the valley, daffodils, globe flower, bryony,
bindweed, bird’s-foot trefoil, hop, woody night-shade,
bramble, blue cornflower, valerian, leopard’s-bane, money-
wort, and many other interesting wildlings. Amongst
these will be seen the columbine, and we find it sur-

COLUMBINE 219

rounds itself with so goodly a progeny that it is
absolutely necessary in the interests of other things to do
a little judicious eradication.

It was held by Tragus and others that the seeds
of the columbine given with saffron in a little wine were
remedial for those suffering from jaundice, while the
leaves were boiled in milk as a remedy against sore
throat. However this may be, Linnzus records cases of
children that have lost their lives through being over-
dosed with it. Leaves, root, flowers, seeds, have all been
pressed into the service of the professors of medicine.
One Pauli asserts that he cured children of small-pox and
measles by administering columbine seeds in powder to
them ; and one Scopoli, not to be outdone, declares that
he was equally successful. Another man commends a
decoction of the leaves in water as a gargle for inflam-
mation of the throat; but the plant has now no place in
the paraphernalia of the disciples of the healing art and
lives in peace, having no longer any attraction to the
herbalist collecting his simples.

It would be evidently impossible within any reasonable
compass to deal with all the various fruit forms that may
be found in our country rambles, nor would there be any
great gain in doing so. Our object has been rather to
take the leading forms and those that may be considered
fairly typical. We propose, therefore, next to deal with
the scarlet poppy, since its “heads” form an excellent
illustration of the globular capsule, as those of the campion
do of the flask-like form. The parsnip again, and the
shepherd’s needle, that we come to in due course, are
illustrations of that great order of umbel-bearing plants

220 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

that includes the fennel, celery, parsley, and carrot of our
vegetable gardens, and the hemlock, water dropwort,
hog’s-fennel, hog-weed, and many other species amongst
our wild growths. In like manner we presently deal with
the broom as representative of the great order of pod-
bearers, and therefcre standing for the peas, scarlet-runners,
lupins, and the like of our gardens, and the birdsfoot
trefoil, kidney-vetch, furze, and many other pod-producing
plants in our fields and hedgerows.

One repeatedly comes across the statement that we
have but two scarlet wildflowers in Britain—the poppy
and the pimpernel ; but such a statement requires a con-
siderable amount of correction, since there is more than
one kind of British poppy that is scarlet, while on the
other hand the pimpernel, sometimes emphatically called
the scarlet pimpernel, has yet nothing like the depth and
intensity of colour in its blossoms that we find in the
poppies. It is not really scarlet at all, but what may be
perhaps termed a terra-cotta red, or, may be, salmon-colour.
The colour is a very refined and delicate one, and defies
the limited nomenclature of the colour-man. When it
comes to trying to imitate it, in painting the flower, we
may perhaps best think of it as a colour that would be
scarlet if more intense. We cannot call it a pale scarlet,
as there is no such colour: scarlet is scarlet and it is
nothing else. The flowers of the pheasant’s eye, magnificent
in strength of colour as they are, are more crimson really
than scarlet.

POPPY 221

POPPY (PapaveR RuH«as)

The Poppy is very much in evidence on our railway
embankments and waste ground, but more notably yet
amongst the farmer’s corn and other crops. Beautiful
as it is, it can only by severe utilitarians be denounced,
we are afraid, as a noxious weed.' The same may be
said of the charlock that clothes the arable lands with
a rich mass of yellow, to the delight of the artist and
the disgust of the farmer. At the same time some little
cleansing of the land is possible, and to see a field one
glorious sheet of scarlet or of gold is not an indication
of good farming.

Why a poppy should be so called does not appear.
We must not forget that no names come fortuitously ;
all have a significance, but, naturally, by lapse of time
this original significance is sometimes lost to us. It was
said, somewhat severely, of a certain book that was
regarded as a classic, that, as it was now never read,
its position in our literature was assured, and the poppy,
having been so called for centuries, will doubtless. still
be a poppy in popular nomenclature for centuries more,
no one knowing or caring why. In Anglo-Saxon days
it was the popig. It is by some old authors called the
corn-rose, a name admirably descriptive of its favourite
habitat, but entirely wanting in point as suggesting any
sort of comparison in growth, form, colour, or anything

1 Poppies nodding mock the hope of toil.
CRABBE.
Where the dark poppy flourish’d on the dry

And sterile soil, and mock’d the thin-set rye.
CRABBE,

222 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

else, with the rose. It is also sometimes called the
cop-rose. Prior, in his Popular Names of British Plants,
suggests that this is “from its red rose-like flower, and
the cop or button-like shape of its capsule.” Those
who find this explanation sufficient are almost to be envied ;
for the flower is not at all rose-like, while buttons,
even if we are willing to think of them as cops, are
yet of all sorts of shapes. Other names are cheese-ball, the
globular head suggesting a spherical cheese, and headache
from the presumed effects of the odour of the flower.

Botanically our plant is the Papaver Rheas. The
first name descends to us at all events from the days
of Pliny, but those who do not find in this a sufficient
justification for the name invite us to believe, which
we personally decline to do, that it was so called “ because
the plant was administered with pap to induce sleep.”
All the poppies are very narcotic” in property, the opium
poppy being notably so. The specific name Rheas signifies
a pomegranate, as the capsules somewhat resemble that
fruit in their form.

On the summit of the capsule are still retained the
rays of the stigma, making a very pleasing star-like
form, and immediately beneath these rays will be seen
a series of little apertures through which the seeds, when
ripe, very speedily find their way. In two of our British

2 Corn poppies, that in crimson dwell,
Called Headaches from their sickly smell.
CLARE.
2 Not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep

Which thou ow’dst yesterday.
SHAKESPEARE, Ofhello.

BUTTERCUPS 223

poppies, the P. Argemone and the P. dubium, the capsules
are not globular, but elongated. The capsules, ere they are
fully ripe and hardened into a crisp, dry condition, contain
a good deal of milky juice, as we find on making our
section. Were it not that the quantity yielded is too
small to repay cultivation, these poppy-heads would furnish
us with British-grown opium.

The petals of the poppy are particularly fugitive ; if
the flowers be gathered they soon lose their charm, many
of the petals shattering at once,! and the others quickly
withering.

BUTTERCUPS (Ranuncutus Acris)

The fruits of the various species of Buttercup are
interesting in form, and will repay some little observation.
While all are built up on the same general idea, there
is a very interesting variation of detail. The idea of
gathering fruit from buttercups may appear somewhat
chimerical ; had we said blackberries instead of buttercups
one could have better entertained the thought. In popular
language the word fruit suggests the idea of something
juicy and tempting-looking, while some would limit their
use of the term yet more, and practically insist that a fruit
must be something edible. In truth, however, whatever
seed-bearing form succeeds the flower is a fruit, a pea-pod
or a vegetable marrow as much as an apple, a dry, untempt-

' Pleasures are like poppies spread,

You seize the flower, its bloom to shed,
BuRNS.

224 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

ingly-looking sycamore samara as fully as the juiciest pear.
The fruit, it must be understood, is always based on the
pistil, and when the other constituent parts of the flower,
petals, stamens, and so forth, their duty done, have withered
away, the pistil develops into the seed-vessel, often very
greatly enlarging in bulk, and modifying its form. Within
this seed-vessel are the seeds, many or few, and these are
either liberated by the opening of the fully-developed re-
ceptacle for them, as in the poppy, broom, and thorn-apple,
or the whole thing on maturity comes to the ground, as
in the case of the apples that we may see lying at the
oot of the trees. In this latter case the enclosing envelope
gradually decays, and the seed is set free to germinate
and set up an independent existence.

The fruits of all our species of buttercup are built up
of a series of fleshy carpels radiating from the centre and
arranged into a globular, or sometimes elongated, head ;
sometimes rounded at their outer extremities, at others
terminating in a small beak, sometimes quite smooth,
and in other species wrinkled or covered with small
tubercles. The fruits of the spearwort, Ranunculus
Flammula, the lesser celandine, R. Ficaria, or the goldi-
locks, R. auricomus, are excellent examples of the globular
form, while the celery-leaved ranunculus, R. sceleratus,
has its very numerous carpels arranged in a very dense
cylindrical head. The fruit of the corn crowfoot, R.
arvensis, is composed of a few large carpels that are covered
on both sides with hooked prickles: it is a particularly
quaint form. Buttercups are called ranunculuses, a word
derived from rana, a frog, because they are ordinarily found
in low marshy ground beloved of frogs, but the corn

BUTTERCUPS 225

crowfoot is an exception and should be sought for in corn-
fields. All the species are of a very acrid nature, but
the corn crowfoot, inoffensive little thing as it looks, is
the most poisonous of all our buttercups: it is therefore
a matter of some little interest to us that our millers
should carefully cleanse their wheat from this and other
extraneous matters. The plant is called crowfoot from
a fancy that the shape of the foliage in this and the allied
species somewhat resembles a bird’s foot, while buttercup is
suggested by the golden cup-like forms of the flowers.

It may be somewhat of the nature of news to some
of our readers that the word buttercup is what the old
grammarians called ‘a noun of multitude,” and signifieth
many flowers. To people not a few, who have given
no special heed to the matter, since it is not given to
all men to know all things, a buttercup is simply a little
yellow cup-like flower that each early summer-time is
very conspicuous, and that has somehow got bracketed
off with another flower, the result being that ‘“ buttercups
and daisies” stand as a sort of symbol or shorthand
for the idea of the Summer wild-flowers, as the primrose
does of those of Spring. We can well remember what
a shock it was to our sense of the proprieties when,
half a century ago, we found that a buttercup could be
a white flower. When in classic times they would seek
to express the extreme of improbability, nothing seemed
so apt as the idea of a black swan; a white buttercup
appeared to be almost a parallel phenomenon to ourselves,
and yet we have lived to see both.

One of the earliest of Spring flowers is a buttercup,
the little celandine that stars the brown earth with its

i)

226 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

golden blossoms; and throughout the whole floral year
buttercups of one sort or another are always with us.
In the early summer the quiet pools and gently-moving
streams are one great sheet of white from the countless
blossoms of the water-buttercups, while the forest-banks
are gay with the golden flowers and graceful foliage
of the wood crowfoot. The meadows in May and June
are no longer a mass of verdure to the eye, but are
transformed into glowing gold by the alchemy of Nature,
through the masses of bulbous crowfoot, while high away
on the corn-land, as we have seen, the dry and arid ground
has its representative buttercup, the corn crowfoot. Some,
like the meadow crowfoot, have flowers of brilliant golden
yellow ; while others, as the celery-leaved ranunculus, have
their blossoms of paler tint. Some, like the meadow crowfoot,
again, have their leaves richly cut into radiating segments —
and deeply serrated, a form that one may call the typical
buttercup form of foliage ; while the lesser celandine has
them heart-shaped, and the spearwort has them nearly a
foot long, but an inch or two in breadth at most, and
scarcely or not at all notched on their margins. Some, like
this same noble spearwort, have blossoms that a half-crown
would not more than cover; while others, as those of
the corn crowfoot, a sixpence would suffice to veil from
view. Most of them have five-petalled flowers, but in
the little celandine we have counted any number of petals
in its blossoms up to fourteen. It will be seen, then,
that to declare that one has seen a buttercup in flower
is scarcely in itself sufficient, as one may in so doing
provoke the question, “And. which one was it, out
of our twenty British species, that you saw?”

PARSNIP 227

PARSNIP (Pastinaca Sativa)

In Plate XXXIV. we have a drawing of the Parsnip—
a plant that many persons would at once associate in
their minds with the kitchen garden, but which is,
nevertheless, a true wildling—and the source from whence
the cultivated parsnip was derived. In the wild plant
the root is small, hard, and stringy, and not at all open
to the amenities of the culinary art, though on gathering
it we find it having in form and odour a suggestive
resemblance to the parsnips of the gardener. In the
garden we have seen roots dug up of eighteen inches
circumference round the crown and two feet long. The
wild parsnip is found freely enough in many parts of
the country, on the banks, edges of fields, or waste ground,
but has a distinct preference for a chalky or gravelly
soil. The plant we figure we gathered in a quite ideal
situation for it—a wild, open, breezy downland country,
with the blue sea for our horizon, and immediately in
front of us a great chalk pit gleaming in almost dazzling
whiteness in the sunshine, and its floor a mass of débris
overgrown with grass and wild thyme and great patches of
the yellow blossoms of the parsnip.

Its blossoms are seen when examined singly to be
very small, but, being massed together into heads, con-
tributing their share in the general floral display. As will
be seen from our illustration, they are yellow in colour,
and are borne in clusters of some eight or [ten rays to
the general flower-head. This arrangement is known as
umbellate, and these umbel-bearing flowers form’!a very
large natural order, the Umbellifere, that includes many

228 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

valuable plants, and others, such as the hemlock, of the
most poisonous nature.

The name seems to be with equal propriety given
as parsnip, or parsnep, in the various text-books, any six
that favour the one spelling being balanced by half a
dozen that prefer the other, and in the older authors
we may find pasnep and divers other variations. These,
however, were the days before Civil Service Examinations,
when a man was free to spell as he liked, no man daring
to make him afraid. The plant was cultivated by the
Romans, and it is recorded in the society gossip of his
day that the Emperor Tiberius was specially partial to
a dish of parsnips. To the Romans the plant was the
Pastinaca, a name that we find in Pliny and other writers,
and which has gradually, as it has come down the ages,
been corrupted into parsnip. When our gardener would
set out young plants, such as lettuce or cabbage, he
makes a series of holes with a tool called a dibble to insert
their roots in, and when the gardener in old Roman days
had a similar task, he used a precisely similar tool, only
instead of calling it a dibble he called it pastinum, and
in its size and shape it was so very like a parsnip root
that the parsnip was called Pastinaca. The parsnip has
for centuries been cultivated as a welcome food both
for man and beast, but it has no great nutritive powers.’
It contains a considerable amount of sugar, but in this
respect the beetroot surpasses it, so that no great commercial
use has been made of it.

1 Gerard declares that ‘‘The parsneps nourish more than doe the
Turneps or the Carrots, and the nourishment is somewhat thicker, but not
faultie nor bad.” Those, therefore, who like to take their nourishment
thick will still pin their faith on parsnips.

PARSNIP.

PARSNIP 229

In the Middle Ages it was considered the correct adjunct
to the salt fish of the days of abstinence, a combination
that we believe still holds, as a curious survival, in some
parts of the country, haddock and parsnips being as
much in accordance with the fitness of things as lamb
and mint sauce or any other blend sanctioned by con-
servatism and immemorial usage. A kind of beer is made
by mashing up the roots with hops and then proceeding
to fermentation, and a more aristocratic beverage known
as parsnip wine is also in repute in some rural districts.
Gerard quaintly tells us that “ there is a good and pleasant
food or bread made of the roots of Parsneps, as my friend
Mr. Plat hath set forth in his booke of experiments,
which I have made no triall of, nor meane to do.”

Dioscorides, who as an authority is at least venerable
if not reliable, affirms that deer are preserved from the
attacks of serpents by sedulously eating wild parsnips,
and thus becoming poison-proof ; whereupon mankind,
by observance of this, equally protect themselves from
the venom of serpents and scorpions by drinking wine
in which the aromatic seeds of parsnips have been steeped.
Bacon, in Sylva Sylvarum, published in the year 1629,
reports as a curious fact that “roots, such as Carrets and
Parsnips, are more Sweet and Lushious in Infectious Yeeres
than in other Yeeres.”’ He had observed, too, that “in the
Plague of the last Yeere there were seene in divers Ditches
and low Grounds about London many Toads that had Tailes
two or three Inches long at the least: Whereas Toads
(vsually) have no Tailes at all. Which argueth a great
Disposition to Putrefaction in the Soile and Aire,”? and

! His book is a most interesting one; on the surface amusing, yet pathetic

230 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

therefore, incidentally, an unusually good crop of unusually

good parsnips.

CARROT (Daucus Carota)

The bracketing together of parsnips and carrots by
Bacon reminds us that in the Carrot, an equally common wild
plant, we have another very typical plant carrying its flowers
and fruits in this umbellate fashion. It is the parent of
the cultivated carrot of our gardens. It should be found
flowering during June, July, and August, throwing up
numerous heads of white flowers. These heads are flat-
topped, but as the fruit begins to ripen the head grows
more and more concave, until it becomes at last quite cup-
like in form. This peculiarity gives the plant one of its
popular names, the bird’s-nest, and in Holland and Germany
it bears a name of similar import. In the wild state it
thrives best on calcareous soils, attaining to a height of
some two or three feet, and noticeable from its disks, some
three to five inches in diameter, of white blossoms, and its
richly-cut: foliage. Parkinson, writing in 1643, says that
the ladies of his day wore the leaves of the carrot in their
hair as an adornment. In the Autumn the foliage changes
into brilliant yellow and scarlet, and becomes sought after

in its honest struggling through the darkness to light. He tells us, for instance,
that “it is strange that is generally received, how Poysonous Beasts affect
Odorate and Wholesome Herbs: As that the Snake loueth Fennell: that the
Toad will be much vnder Sage: that Frogs will be in Cinquefoile,” and then—
thinking it out, and daring to set his opinion against that of many men of
recognised weight and authority—he hazards the idea that “ it may be, it is
rather the Shade or other Couerture that they take liking in than the Vertues
of the Herbe.” We can all think so now, but it is more difficult to be the first
to question long-standing beliefs.

CARROT 931

from its beauty for table decoration, etc. A Surrey farmer
told us that more than once he found trespassers cutting
the leaves from his carrots, so he determined that he would
do so instead, and sending up large consignments of these
leaves to Covent Garden, he, to quote his own words,
“got big money for them.”

The root of the wild carrot is of a yellowish-white
colour, woody in texture, acrid to the taste, yet having most
unmistakably the typical carrot odour. The carpels that
form the fruits are flattened in form and bearing four very
bristly ridges on their surfaces. They contain a powerful
volatile oil, and are very aromatic to the smell and taste,
being held superior in strength and efficacy to the cultivated
ones for medicinal purposes. The carrot, except that its
boiled roots are still sometimes used for soothing poultices,
is not now employed in medical practice ; but in earlier days,
including in this elastic and comprehensive term anything
from the days of Augustus Cesar to George the Fourth,
it was held in great estimation in medicine. As an article
of food carrots are wholesome and nutritious, consisting
largely of starch and sugar. Horses and cattle are very
fond of them, and we can most of us, we suppose, remember
with what entire satisfaction our rabbits munched them up.
Botanically the carrot is the Daucas carota, Daucus being
the Greek name, dating back before the Christian era—

1 Plants (for the most part) are more strong, both in Taste and Smell in
the Seed than in the Leafe and Root. The Cause is, for that in Plants that
are not of a Fierce or Eager Spirit, the Vertue is increased by Concoction
and Maturation, which is euer most in the Seed: But in Plants that are of a
Fierce and Eager Spirit they are stronger whilest the Spirit is enclosed in the
Root ; And the Spirits doe but weaken and dissipate when they come to the
Aire and Sunne. As we see it in Onions, Garlike, etc.—Bacon, Sylva
Sylvarum,

232 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

while carota is the Latin word for the plant, and as
venerable as the other, the generic title.

CRANBERRY (Vaccinium Oxycoccos)

Growing luxuriantly on the peat mosses and boggy
moorlands and in the fen country one may find the beautiful
little Cranberry. Though recorded as far south as Sussex,
its true home is in the northern counties, since it is there
that the conditions are most freely found that are essential
to its well-being. Many districts, too, in the eastern fenlands
that once bore it abundantly know it no more, since drainage
and the subsequent cultivation of the land have entirely
changed the local conditions. Many beautiful bog plants
are on this account approaching extinction, and such splendid
butterflies as the Swallow-tail are growing much scarcer
than one at all likes to contemplate. One of the results
is that while England used once on a time to grow all
her own cranberries, they are now, being largely used in
matters culinary, imported in immense quantities, over
fifty thousand gallons a year, from Russia, Spain, Germany,
Hungary, and Sweden. What are also called cranberries
come very freely from the United States of America.
They are not, however, quite the same, but a closely-allied
species, Vaccinium macrocarpa, growing much more erect
than the true cranberry, and having larger berries.

The cranberry creeps over marsh and fen, seldom
growing more than three or four inches high, and spreading
very freely. It has a goodly number of names descriptive
of its habitat, being known in different parts of the country
as the marsh-wort, marsh-whortleberry, fen-berry, fen-

CRANBERRY 233

grapes, marsh-berry, moss-berry, moor-berry, bog-berry,
and bog-wort. Why it should be called cranberry is not
so immediately obvious, and as two or three different
reasons are given we may not uncharitably assume that
nobody knows: all are so unsatisfactory that it is really
not worth while to set them forth.

The stems of the cranberry are very slender and
delicate, and clothed with small evergreen leaves, much
like those of the thyme. They are almost white beneath,
and their upper surface is rolled back at the edges. The
flowers, borne singly on long slender stems, hang pendent,
and are of a delicate rose-colour, the four segments of the
corolla being thrown back, as we see in the flower of the
potato, or the woody nightshade. The plant is in flower
in Mayand June. The berries are ripe by August. They
are globular in form and crowned by the four little teeth
of the withered calyx. ‘They are red in colour, and many-
seeded, while their flavour is open to question, being acid
and astringent, with a certain dash in it that some people
enjoy and others do not. Hooker, we see, declares that
“the fruit is highly agreeable” ; a sober botanist as he
is, and not at all given to rhapsodies, affirms further, that
it makes “the best of tarts.” It is at all events pronounced
to be very wholesome and strongly antiscorbutic. They
will keep a long time if gathered in dry weather and then
put into well-corked bottles. The botanical name of the
cranberry is Vaccinium Ozycoccos, the latter half of the
name being compounded of two Greek words signifying
sharp or acid, and a berry. A considerably older author
than Hooker affirms of cranberries that “they take away
the heate of burning agues, and also the drought, they

234 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

quench the furious heate of choler, restore an appetite to
meate which was lost by reason of cholericke and corrupt
humours, and are good against the pestilent diseases. The
juice of these also is boyled till it be thicke, with sugar
added that it may be kept, which is good for all things
that the berries are, yea, and far better.” On the Continent
they are by fermentation made into a kind of wine, and
they lare also converted into a pleasant acidulous cooling
beverage for the hot weather, or, rather, for the relief of
the thirst that the hot weather induces.

One curious result of the war in 1570 between Germany
and France was its effect on the marketing of all kinds
of wild fruit. | Thousands of barrels of hedgerow and
moorland gatherings are in the ordinary course of events
exported every year from Germany to France. These,
bilberries, cranberries, bird-cherries, and the like, form, it
is not obscurely hinted, a very important element in the
production of claret and other vintages. There being
no foreign market for these in war-time, the fruit, arriving
in cartloads in the various towns of the Fatherland, became
a mere drug in the market, and beautiful strawberries,
raspberries, and other wild fruits were going for a mere
song, whatever that standard of value may be. Before
the war the export value from Hanover alone was over
three hundred thousand francs a year, chiefly, of course,
the result of child labour.

BEAR-BERRY (ArctostapHyLos Uva Urs)

Another graceful little plant, though one must go to
Scotland, Ireland, or the North of England to see it, is
the Bear-berry. It delights to grow amongst the heather

BEAR-BERRY 235

and on dry rocky slopes, being quite at home up to three
thousand feet above the sea. Its botanical name has a
rather formidable appearance, Arctostaphylos Uva Ursi.
The first name, however, is but bear-berry over again,
only this time in a Greek dress, while the second name
is again bear-berry, but now set forth in Latin. The
generic name was bestowed on the plant by Adanson, a
celebrated French botanist, who published his notable work,
a book on the families of plants, in the year 1763. One
curious feature in his nomenclature, though the present is
an exception, is that many of the names he gives are to
all appearance meaningless, or so obscure and recondite
as to be entirely pointless.'. Clusius, a Dutch botanist,
who wrote in 1601 his best-known book, 4 History of
Rare Plants, is responsible for the specific name. Whether
we take Greek or Latin or English, we arrive at the
same idea that the fruit of the plant is a delectable item
in the food of bears. It may perchance be objected
that there are no bears, at least of the quadrupedal type,
in Durham or Cromarty, but we must always beware of
falling into the fallacy that because a plant is undoubtedly
British it is British alone, and in Northern Europe, Northern
Asia, Northern America, where the plant is as much at home
as in North Britain, bears are no less at home. It is
sometimes called bear’s bilberry or meal-berry, in Danish
meelber, from the mealy character of its fruit.

1 Thus the gentianella, a graceful little yellow-flowering plant of the turf-
bogs, he called Cicendza, It has been suggested that this is from the Greek
kikinnos, curled hair, or from the Latin czs and candeo, to burn within,
though what curly locks or internal combustion have to do with this charming
little plant it would be impossible to explain. Another plant, the hedge
parsley, he called Zorz/is—wherefore, no man knoweth,

236 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

The stems of the bear-berry are procumbent, branching
and spreading very freely, so that the plant when found at
all is ordinarily in large masses, covering a considerable
area of ground. ‘The leaves are evergreen, small, less than
an inch in length, ovate, unnotched at their margins, stiff
and rigid in their character, and having a glossy surface.
They are very numerous, and set closely together on the
stems, and if we taste one we find it somewhat bitter
and austere. They have long been used in medicine, and
still retain something of their ancient reputation. They
are gathered in large quantities, and when dried are used
as an astringent tonic. They contain a large amount of
tannin, and Linneus tells us in his Flora Lapponica that
these leaves are picked in great quantities in the north of
Sweden, and sent down to Stockholm and other towns for
the use of the tanners.

The flowers are of a delicate rose-colour, tubular, very
like a heath-bell or lily-of-the-valley flower in form, and
with spreading five-cleft mouth. They may be found in
May and June, growing some five or six together at the
ends of the stems. The berries that succeed them are of
course necessarily also clustered at the termination of the
branches, and should be sought by bears, botanists, and
others during September. They are small, globular in form,
bright red in colour, and having a shining surface. On
cutting one open across its centre we see five radiating cells,
and in each of these a hard, brown seed. The berry has
at its base the five sepals of the calyx, not crowning the
fruit, as we have seen it doing in the cranberry. The
fruit is fairly fleshy, but of the mealy or floury texture
and appearance that we have already referred to, On

CROWBERRY 237

tasting it we find it almost tasteless, but such flavour as it
has, while somewhat bitter and austere, is yet not altogether
unpleasant. Most animals, cows, horses, and the like, leave
these berries untouched, but to the grouse and other
birds they are very welcome and are much sought after.

CROWBERRY (Empetrum Nicrum)

The Crowberry, another pretty little moorland plant,
must not go unmentioned. It is commonly to be found
on the mountains, on the great stretches of moorland of
Scotland, where it is the badge of the McLeans, in Ireland,
and in the north and west and centre of England, though
not known down south. It is abundant in that noble
stretch of wild country known as Cannock Chase. Here in
Autumn we may find the great moorland glowing with
crimson heath, while the bilberry, the cowberry, and the
cranberry are all to be found abundantly, and, as freely as
any, the dark glossy fruits of the crowberry. The Chace
is a far-stretching plateau some six to seven hundred feet
above the sea, a glorious wind-swept piece of wild nature.
The surface soil is chiefly gravel and stone, that has been
described with some graphic force as the riddlings of creation,
offering, therefore, little or no temptation, one would have
thought, for enclosure. Large tracts have, however, of late
years been ploughed up, a proceeding little to the benefit of
any one, and, so far as it goes, destructive of a wild beauty
that might well have been suffered to remain, and which
we, Staffordshire-born, can only deeply regret any loss of.

The crowberry is a trailing and widely-spreading plant,
its long slender branches covering much ground to the

238 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

almost entire exclusion of anything else. The plant has a
very heath-like appearance, its small evergreen leaves being
very simple in character and crowded on the stems. The
edges of the leaves are much rolled back, and from the
upper surface invisible. The flowers, a reddish-purple in
colour, are very minute, and spring from the axils of the
leaves, being found freely towards the extremities of the
stems. The flowering season is in May, and the flowers
are dicecious, the staminate flowers being on one plant
and the pistillate on another. In each we find a ring of
small scales as a base or cup, in the one case three rather
prominent stamens springing from it, and in the other
a short style, crowned by a nine-rayed stigma.

The fruit is a fleshy globular berry, growing in clusters,
and ripening by about the beginning of September. It is
purplish-black in colour, glossy in surface, and about the
size of a pea, and, as it grows in these little groups around
the stem, distinctly attractive to the eye. To the taste
these berries are unpalatable, and if partaken of at all freely,
give rise to headache and other unpleasant indications that
they are not a particularly wholesome article of diet for
mankind, though the grouse, ptarmigan, and other moorland
birds seek them eagerly. The plant is called the crowberry
from its glossy black fruits, or sometimes the crakeberry,
the old Norse word for a crow being kraka. In Denmark
the plant is known as the krakebar, and as we have
found many of our popular plant names to have descended
from Anglo-Saxon times, so, without doubt, crakeberry
is a memorial of the days of Danish invasion. Botanically
the crowberry is the Empetrum nigrum: the first name,
Greek in its origin, referring to the home of the plant

BROOM 239

amidst rocks and stony places; while the second, Latin
in its source, reminds us of the nigrescent character of
the fruit.

BROOM (SarorHamnus Scoparivs)

The Broom, Sarothamnus scoparius, the subject of Plate
XXXV., may be freely met with throughout the British
Islands where the conditions are favourable to its well-being.
It is equally at home all over Europe, in Northern Africa,
and in the west of Asia. All it asks is dry sandy waste
ground, railway banks, commons, hillsides, no matter how
sterile and poor the soil, how arid the environment. It
will grow, and flourish too, where many plants decline
to even exist, on the sand-hills that in many places
skirt the sea and are exposed to the full force of the gales.
It is therefore planted in Holland and elsewhere, that
its roots may assist in binding the loose sand together
to form a barrier and a defence against the encroaching
sea. On the shores of the Bay of Biscay great plantations
of pine-trees have been formed to protect the land in their
rear from being overwhelmed by the drifting sand, and
the seedling pines are effectually guarded from being buried
by being sown behind hedges of broom. It is in Scotland
the badge of clan Forbes.

In the first folio of the Tempest we read, “ Now would
I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren

”

ground, long heath, browne firrs, anything ;” and it was
suggested by Sir Thomas Hanmer in 1774 that what
Shakespeare really meant and wrote was “ling, heath,
broom, furze,”—anything, no matter how humble or how

useless, that indicated dry land.

240 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

Hartlib, writing in the year 1659, wisely enough declares
that “ furze, broom, heath, these can hardly be so destroyed,
but at length they wil up againe: for God hath given a
peculiar propriety to every kinde of earth, to produce some
peculiar kind of Plants, which its wil observe euen to the
world’s end.”

The broom varies in height from a foot or two to
eight feet or more, but one ordinarily finds it a shrub
of some four feet high or so. Its branches are long
and straight, evergreen and furrowed. Though they
be somewhat rigid-looking they are yet very flexible,
and conquer the searching blasts that sweep over them,
not by sturdy resistance, but by judiciously yielding.
As these stems are very fibrous they have been employed
as a material in the manufacture of paper. Tusser, we
see, says, “ pluck broome, broome still ; cut broome, broome
kill.” How far this may be true we cannot say, but we
do know that the plucking of broom owing to its tenacious
fibrosity’ is a very difficult task. Broom tugged at and
wrenched apart would, we imagine, suffer more injury
than if clearly severed with a stout knife.

The leaves of the broom are somewhat inconspicuous,
the general verdant look of the shrub being largely owing
to the mass of green branches. The lower leaves are on
short stalks, and made up of three leaflets, while the upper
ones are stemless, and only of a single leaflet. Those who
are so unfortunate as to suffer from the “ blacke iaundice”
will be glad to know of the remedy commended by Fitz-

1 We cannot, we are afraid, quote precedent for the use of this word, but it
seems to just express the idea we want to convey, a somewhat pronouncedly
fibrous condition. Dictionary makers will kindly note for their new editions.

BROOM.

BROOM 241

herbert. ‘‘Take as many handfuls (as you thinke good)
of the dried leaves of Broom gathered and brayed to
powder in the moneth of May, then take vnto each
hand full of the dried leaues one spoonful and a halfe
of the seed of Broom braied into powder: mingle these
together, and let the sicke drinke thereof each day a
quantitie first and last, vntill he find some ease. The
medicine must be continued and so long vsed vntill it
be quite extinguished: for it is a disease not very
suddenly cured, but must by little and little be dealt
withall.”

The flowers of the broom will be found in profusion
in the Spring and early Summer. They are large and
of a bright golden yellow, and make a grand display.
They grow singly or in pairs on the stem, but the stems
are so numerous and so freely blossom-bearing that the
whole shrub is transformed into a mass of glowing yellow.
that we find in a book
some two hundred and fifty years old is this—that “ if

,

Amongst some ‘“ Prognosticks’

the Broom be full of Flours it usually signifies Plenty.”
This is a dictum of a particularly cheering character,
since the years are few indeed when the broom is not
thus seized with a spirit of optimistic prophecy. The
flowers of the broom are five-petalled, and of the
papilionaceous, or butterfly, type that we find character-
istic of the great natural order to which it belongs, and
including such well-known plants as the furze, rest harrow,
melilot, the various clovers, bird’s-foot trefoil, kidney-
vetch, sainfoin, tufted vetch, everlasting pea, broad bean,
and scarlet runner. In all of these we find the form
shown in our illustration, a broadly-displayed petal called
16

242 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

the standard; beneath this two others, known as the
wings ; and within and below these are yet two others,
that together form the keel.

Gerard and other old writers warmly commend the
flower-buds as a pickle. ‘They are to be gathered,
and laid in pickle or salt, which afterwards being washed
or boyled, are vsed for sallads, as Capers be, and be
eaten with no lesse delight.”” We also read that “ that
worthy Prince of famous memorie Henry 8, King of
England, was woont to drinke the distilled water of
Broome floures against surfets and diseases thereof arising.”
The great worthiness and illustrious memory of this
famous sovereign are points that the author, living in
the reign of his daughter, thought it well to make quite
clear.

The fruit of the broom is a pod, a form as
characteristic of the fruit as the butterfly flowers are of
the blossoms of this great order. These pods in the
broom are flat, and from an inch and a half to two
inches long ; smooth on their sides, but hairy along their
edges. They are full of seeds, and as these approach
maturity the pods become a dark brown. Later on,
when the seeds are all discharged and the pods yet
remain on the plant, they turn to a cold grey-black.
When the seeds are ready for dispersion we may hear
the crackling of the pods all around us as the valves
fly open and eject the seed. In our illustration it will
be seen that the upper pod has thus opened with this
curious elasticity and propelling force.

This question of seed-dispersion is of the greatest interest
and worthy of the closest study, as an illustration of the

BROOM 243

wonderful variety of Nature, and the workings of all sorts
of strange means to a definite end, but it is impossible
here to deal at any length with a subject so wide. We
would only remind our readers how we have seen the
acorn, by the action of the boisterous wind, thrown as from
a catapult; and how by this same action of the wind,
under gentler suasion, the dandelion and _ thistle-heads
float in the air until a congenial resting-place be found ;
how naked coral islands become clothed with vegetation
by seeds floated in protective investments through a
thousand miles of salt ocean, or by seeds adherent to
the feet of the birds that visit them; how seeds, hooked
and burred, are transported on the coats of wandering
animals ; how others, like the maple, the lime, or the ash,
are winged. We have noted, too, how, by elasticity of
action, the seeds of the touch-me-not are scattered,
and we may see this same principle again very beautifully
in the spring-like action that liberates the seeds of the
herb-Robert. Nature is full of beautiful contrivance.
In the case of the broom, herb-Robert, and many other
plants, it is the drying of the parts that liberates the spring
and sets it into motion, but in the Rose of Jericho, for
instance, the reverse is the case; the seed-vessel is driven
along the dry sands by the action of the wind, until,
meeting with a moist spot, it opens and sheds its seeds in
that only place amid the parched plain where provision
exists for their vegetation.’

1 These are contrivances for a great and valuable end, which we can
especially appreciate, because we can compare them with our own designs :
and as well might the inventor of the catapult and the cross-bow doubt his

own ingenuity and intentions as those of the Creator—MaccuLLocn, The
Attributes of God.

244 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

While many of our plants have various names, and are
equally known by any of them, the broom is the broom
alone ; no change of dialect, no provincialism, no local
usage, changes this. It was in Anglo-Saxon days the
brom, and we are told in every text-book that the name
arose from this plant being of special use in the manufacture
of brooms for sweeping purposes.’ The botanical name,
Sarothamnus, dwells again upon this domestic service,
seeing it is compounded of two Greek words, signifying
to sweep, and a shrub, while scoparius is derived from
scope, meaning small twigs, the inference again being that
these same small twigs are just the things for making
brooms. The name broom has been so entirely in use
as a plant name, that it has gained an individuality of
its own, and seems to have wandered away from all
suggestion of housewifery ; but we shall realise the intimacy
of its connection therewith if, instead of calling our present
plant the broom, we call it besom. Besom or no, it is a
charming plant, and one could readily, from Chaucer,
Shakespeare, Spenser, Dryden, Thomson, Scott, Wordsworth,
Cowper, and many another nature-lover, find testimonies
of their appreciation of its beauty.

Turning back, however, to matters more prosaic,
we find the broom of great utility in thatching cottages
and ricks,? and when better fuel is not obtainable, broom
is again capable of playing a useful part in rural economy.
A decoction of broom-tops has until quite recently been

1 And returning vnto the same he founde it in dede sweped cleane with
bromes, but altogether emptie.—Luke xi.—UDALL,

2 He made carpenters to make houses and lodgynges, of great tymber,
and set the houses lyke streetes, and covered them with rede and brome, so
that it was like a lytell towne.—FROISSART,

FURZE 245

in use among the doctors, decoctum scoparii being mentioned
approvingly in a manual of Materia Medica in our pos-
session, dated 1853. These tops have a bitter and nauseous
taste ; but even if many medicines have a nauseous taste, it
does not necessarily follow that things of repulsive flavour
are therefore medicines. This we admit is a truism, but it
needs setting forth all the same. One finds, for instance,
people constantly assuming that, since quinine is a tonic,
other bitter things are tonics no less, a point that by no
means follows. Our forefathers, before the general intro-
duction of the hop in brewing, availed themselves of the
bitterness of the broom-tops as a flavouring to their home-
brewed beer, while the seeds were sometimes roasted as a
substitute for coffee.

FURZE (ULEex Evropeus)

Furze, gorse, and whin are three names for the same
thing, though we often find that this fact is not realised.
We saw recently some bye-laws issued by a corporation,
in which any damage to the “gorse, furze,” and other
plants in their park, was forbidden. We ventured to
remonstrate, and were rebuked for “splitting straws,” and
so the notice stands. In Holland’s translation of Plutarch
we find another illustration of this repetition : “ We must
not alwaies choose that which is easie to be had and
willing to be gotten, for we put by gorse and furzen
bushes, we tread underfoot briers, though they catch hold
of us.”

The prickly nature of the furze is the point that the
poets, like the rest of us, dwell on. Browne, in Britannia’s

246 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

Pastorals, puts together the “furzy tuft”’ and “ breake of
thorns” ; Somervile writes of the “ prickly furze” ; and
Fawkes, in his translation of Theocritus, declares truly
enough that

Thorny furzy hills should ne’er be trod
With legs unguarded, and by feet unshod,

SHEPHERD’S NEEDLE (Scanprx Percten)

The subject of our last illustration, Plate XXXVI, is the
Shepherd’s Needle, a plant that, from the farmer’s point
of view, is only too abundantly to be found in cornfields
and amongst his root crops. To those who, in these
days of unlimited competition, are not preoccupied with
the idea of getting their livelihood from the land, it appears
a graceful little plant enough, not very attractive, but with
a certain quaint charm and delicacy that appeals. This
arises from its very finely-cut foliage, from its heads
of pure white blossom, and, notably, from its very striking-
looking fruits. It flowers straight away from June to
November: our drawing, we see from our diary, was made
in October. We get almost all through the Summer
and Autumn months both blossoms ‘and fruits simul-
taneously, the early flowers having passed on to the
fruiting stage, while other blossoms have scarcely begun
to think of putting in an appearance at all. Though
the plant be only an annual, its eradication is by no means
easy, since it seeds so freely and so persistently. The
plant was by some of the old herbalists commended as a
pot-herb, and they also, though that goes almost without

NEEL

SHEPHERD'S

ie
Ald wag 6

=é
=

r

SHEPHERD'S NEEDLE 247

saying, ascribed various healing virtues to it; but at
present, as no one believes in it either as meat or medicine,
it blossoms undisturbed.

In medieval days many plants were dedicated to the
Virgin Mary, so one is not at all surprised to find that one
old name for this little plant is Our Lady’s Comb. To those
who held such an ascription superstitious the name of Venus
was held preferable, and thus our plant is also Venus’ Comb.
Other people, caring little for such high-sounding dedications,
were content to call the plant the shepherd’s needle. This
alteration of the name from Our Lady to Venus is probably
sometimes a reaction from medievalism. In some cases this
feeling would appear to be carried much further. Thus we
have noticed that some of the children in the New Forest
call the Lungwort Joseph and Mary, while others call it
donkey’s-ears, and it seems at least possible that the Puritans
gave such “vulgar” names as the latter to show contempt
for the religious names bestowed by the monks. The plant
has a multiplicity of names, but if we bear in mind that
some folk thought its fruit like a comb and others like a
needle, that some had a pleasure in church association, some
in classic mythology, and some in the affairs of daily life,
and that the Latin for a court is pecten and for a needle is
acus, we shall have little difficulty in ringing the changes, and
realising how this modest little plant can be Pecten Venerts,
Acula, Acus Veneris, Acus pastoris, Shepherd’s Needle,
Lady’s Comb, Venus’ Comb, Beggar’s Needle, or Crow-
needle. Even this list does not exhaust the names that have
been bestowed upon the plant. In referring to the broom
we pointed out that, while some plants have many names
by which they seemed to be equally well known, the broom

248 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

was everywhere the broom and nothing but the broom.
The shepherd’s needle may certainly stand as a repre-
sentative of the many-named.

We have introduced the shepherd’s needle in our series
since it is so excellent an illustration of a beaked fruit.
Other good examples of this form will be seen in the
numerous wild geraniums, that from this feature are
ordinarily called crane’s-bills.

As one wanders along our peaceful country lanes, by
the sides of quiet streams, over the open moorland, in the
shade of the woodlands, by the margin of the sounding sea,
everywhere one is surrounded by objects of beauty. Our
present care has been to find somewhat of interest yet
remaining when, the time of flowering being over, it is
too hastily assumed that little or nothing attractive is
left. It is manifest that such an aspiration could be
but little more than suggestive of the field open to study.
Many curious forms must perforce go unillustrated,
undwelt on, and having indicated, as we trust, a pleasant
path, others at their will must walk therein. The great
waving pods of the horned poppy, the quaint “cheeses ”’
of the mallow, the curious heart-like fruits of the
shepherd’s purse, the feather-like globes of the thistle,
the rugged heads of the teazel, the burrs of the goose-grass
or the hedge-parsley, the ribbed fruit of the hemlock, the
triangular nut of the black bindweed, are but a few illustra-
tions that at once occur to us as further examples of the
wonderful variety of fruit form in Nature.

We commenced our work with a regret that many of
those who study plants should give almost exclusive attention
to their flowering period ; and we conclude with the earnest

SHEPHERDS NEEDLE 249

hope that our book, which has been to us so pleasant a
task, may be so fortunate as to transfer something of this
pleasure to our readers, and may lead them to see that the
time of fruition no less than the time of preparation has
also its interest and its charm. The works of the Lord
are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein,”
and an appreciative study of Nature brings with it its
own rich reward.

Ares a :
ae

* ny Wy, mide :
RUIN, CAPS Wienke

>
ao) ae

i) Nase

INDEX

So essential did I consider an Index to be to every book, that I proposed to bring
a Bill into Parliament to deprive an author who published a book without an Index of the
privilege of copyright, and, moreover, to subject him to a pecuniary penalty.—Camféell's

Lives of the Chief Justices of England.

ABNORMAL chestnut cluster, 128

Acacia, Mistletoe on, 205

Acer campestre, 148, 151

Acer pseudo-platanus, 148

Acer rubrum, 152

Achilles, Ashen spear of, 137

Acorns as food, 103

Acorus Calamus, 164

Acus Pastoris, 247

Adam in Eden, Extract from, 12, 34,
36, 46, 93, 113, 157, 160, 178, 180

-Adanson, Plant names of, 235

Adder and ash-tree, 141

Esculus Hippocastanum, 128

Affectionate Shepherd, Barnfield’s, 21

Agincourt, Victory of, 69

Alder, 170, 205

All-Hallows, Eve of, 28

All-heal, 208

Almonds and raisins, 29

Amaradulcis, 34

Amsterdam on alder piles, 172

Antidote of Mithridates, 201

Apollo, Ivy-crowned, 48

Aquilegia vulgaris, 216

Arbutus Unedo, 182

Archery and the yew, 69

Arctostaphylos Uva Ursi, 235

Artichoke-gall, 108

Arum maculatum, 96

Ascham, The Zoxophilus of, 69
Ash, 136, 151, 157, 205

Asparagus, Substitute for, 185
Aspen, Mistletoe on, 205

As Pliny saith, 157

Asthma and Stramonium, 189

As You Like Tt, Extract from, 113
Athenian Mercury on Pliny, 157
Athole, Duke of, 122

Atropa Belladonna, 197

Atropine, 198

Attraction of the rural life, 3
Attributes of God, Macculloch, 243
Austen's Treatise of Fruit Trees, 14
Austin, destruction of timber, 138
Autumn, Keats on the, 26

Autumn, season of fruition, Ze
Azalea, Mistletoe on, 205

Baccuus, The ivy-crowned, 48

Bacon, Extract from, 9, 50, 68, 89,
107, 155, 175, 229, 231

Badges, Floral, 237, 239

Bagpipes, Fuller thereon, 176

Barberry, 92 .

Barnfield’s Affectionate Shepherd, 21

Bartolinus on brewing, 121

Barton on the ivy, 49

Basyll, To plant, to

Beaked fruits, 248

252

Bearberry, 234

Beaumont and Fletcher, Quotation
from, 175

Bedeguar on rose, 22

Bed-stuffing, Leaves as, 112

Beech, 109, 137

Beggar’s-needle, 247

Ben Jonson, Extract from, 175

Bianco spino, 7

Bible plants, 146, 153, 199

Bilberry, 179, 237

Birch, 131

Birchen-rods, 136

Bird-cherry, 95

Birdlime, 59, 160, 215

Bird’s-nest, 134, 230

Bittersweet, 34

Blackberry, 80

Black bindweed, 248

Black bryony, 50

Black mulberry, 147

Blackness of ash-buds, 139

Black nightshade, 37

Blackthorn, 52

Blair on the yew, 73

Bleaberry, 181

Bloomfield’s Farmer's Boy, 104

Bog-berry, 233

Bog whortleberry, 181

Bogwort, 233

Bonnet de prétre, 57

Book of Knowledge, Winstanly’s, 190

Botanologia, Extract from, 64

Brimstone butterfly, 19

Bristol Cathedral, Tomb in, 204

Britannia’s Pastorals, Browne, 217,
245

Broom, 220, 239

Browne, Pastorals, 217, 245

Bryant, Flora dietetica, 39

Bryonica dioica, 50

Byrony, Black, 50

Byrony, Red-berried, 50, 218

Buckinghamshire beeches, 110

Buckthorn, 17

INDEX

Buff-top moth, 127

Bulbous crowfoot, 226
Bull-berries, 179

Bulliard on poisonous plants, 96
Burnham Beeches, 116

Burns, Quotation from, 13, 54, 223
Burrs of the goose-grass, 248
Butcher’s broom, 184
Buttercup, 223

Butter from beech-nuts, 115
Buttons of plane-tree, 154

C4SAR DE BELLO GALLICO, 180
Cesar on the beech-tree, 110
Cain’s apple, 183
Camberwell beauty butterfly, 135
Canadian autumn, 152
Canker-rose, 22
Cannock Chase, 237
Carrington on the ivy, 49
Carrot, 220, 230
Castanea equina, 128
Castanea vesca, 124
Celandine, Lesser, 224, 225
Celery-leaved ranunculus, 224, 226
Chaldean tree-worship, 11
Charles de Guise, Device of, 49
Charlock, 221
Chatigna, Dish of, 128
Chaucer, Extract from, 7, 10, 20, 69,.
78, 104, 147, 151
Cheeses of mallow, 248
Children in the Wood, Tragedy of, 82
Christmas festivities, 49, 67, 155, 203.
Christ-thorn, 156
Churchyard yews, 71
Cinquefoil, 130-218
Clare, Extract from, 222
Claremont holly, 157
Clematis Vitalba, 13, 78
Cloud-berry, 84
Clusius, History of Rare Plants, 235
Coal-supply, 138
Cockchafer on oak, 109
| Coffee substitutes, 115, 167, 200, 245;

INDEX

Colbatch on mistletoe, 212

Coleridge, Quotation from, 132

Coles, William, his book, 12, 36, 97,
121, 136

Columbine, 215

Comedy of Errors, Extract from, 47

Companion to the Orchard, Extract
from, 89, 93, 200

Compensation, Paley on, 210

Compleat Husbandman, Extract from,
205

Confessio Amantis, Extract from, 26

Conserve of roses, 21

Corn-crowfoot, 224, 226

Corn-rose, 221

Cornus sanguinea, 74

Corylus Avellana, 27

Cow-berry, 181, 237

Cowley, Quotation from, 103

Cowper, Extract from, 49, 79, 114, 137

Cows killed by yew, 63

Crabbe on poppy, 221

Crackberry, 179

Crakeberry, 238

Crampons of the ivy, 47

Cranberry, 181, 232

Crane’s-bill, 248

Crategus Oxyacantha, 13

Crecy, Victory of, 69

Creech, Lucretius, 63

Cronycles of Froissart, 90

Cross of Calvary, 10

Crowberry, 237

Crowfoot, 225

Crow-needle, 247

Cuckoo-pint, 96

Culfrewort, 215

Culpeper, Extract from, 29, 141, 189,
214

Cypress, 62

DAGGER-WOOD, 75
Dartmoor, Carrington, 49
Datura Stramonium, 186
Daucus carota, 231

253

Deadly nightshade, 195

Deepdene beeches, 110

Description of England, Uarrison,
105, 138

Destruction of trees, 107, 137

Device of Charles de Guise, 49

Dewberry, 83

Dewtry, or thorn apple, 186

Dickens, the Sunbury yew, 73

Dicecious flowers, 40, 52, 65, Ior

Dioscorides, Writings of, 27, 103

Dispersion of seeds, 102, 242

Divination by plants, 25, 27, 241

Doctrine of signatures, 12, 195

Dog-berry, 75

Dog-rose, 22

Dog-seeking by the stars, 190

Dogwood, 74

Domesday Book, 106

Donkey’s-ears, 247

Dowry of panage rights, 106

Drayton on Columbine, 217

Druidic worship, 12, 72, 99, 203, 207

Dry beaten people, 35

Dryden, Quotation from, 73, 91, 198

Drying plants, 22

Duval, Experiment by Dr., 35

Dwale, 195

Dyer, Extract from, 198

“ EDGEHILL” OF JAGO, 136

Edward III. on shooting, 70
Edward the Confessor, panage, 107
Eglantier, 20

Eglantine, 19, 79

Elder, 174

Elijah, juniper-tree, 199

Elm, 157

Empetrum nigrum, 238

Empty nutshell, Use for, 26

Epine blanche, 7

Epping Forest hornbeams, 116
Espino blanco, 7 ;

Euonymus Europwus, 56

Evelyn, Extract from, 28, 109, 148, 183

254

Eve of All-Hallows, 28

Evergreen oak, Acorns of, 106

“ Every man out of his humour,” 175
Exeter Cathedral, Brass in, 218

FarrFAx, Extract from, 113

Famine in England, 104

Farmers Boy, Quotation from, 104

Fausse platane, 148

Feast of Tabernacles, 67

Fen-berry, 232

Fennel, 126

Ficus sycamorus, 147

Field-rose, 22

Fir-cones as dessert, 121

Fiue Hundred Potntes,
197

Flag or Iris, 165

Flail, 157

Fletcher on the yew, 73

Flora Dietetica of Bryant, 39

Flora Historica of Phillips, 187

Flora Lapponica of Linnzeus, 236

Floral badges, 237, 239

Flower-odours, 143, 177

Flowre and the Leafe of Chaucer, 20,
147

Fodder, Iris as, 167

Feetid Iris, 173

Forest ponies tree-planting, 102

Forest Scenery of Gilpin, 109.

Forest trees of Selby, 158

Formal hedge-clipping, 60, 68, 151

Fragaria vesca, 87

Fraxinus excelsior, 139

Frotssart, Extract from, 90, 244

Fruit, what it is, 223

Fuller on the bag-pipes, 176

Fungoid growths, 112, 150

Furiosum, 197

Furze, 220, 245

Tusser’s,

GARDENER’S ivy varieties, 43
Gatter, 75
Gay, Pastorals of, 82

INDEX

Generall Historie of Plantes, 18, 38,
64, 87

Geneva, why so called, 200

Geniévre, 201

Gentianella, 235

Gerard, Extract from, 18, 21, 31, 38,
44, 53, 55, 64, 65, 77, 87, 114, 129,
145, 147, 159, 172, 177, 194, 217,
229

Gilpin, Extract from, 62

Ginepro, 201

Gladdon, 173

Godfrey of Boulogne, Extract from,
113

Goldilocks, 224

Goldsmith, Quotation from, 8

Gonopteryx rhamnt, 19

Googe, his book, ro, 59

Gorse or whin, 245

Gothic, Plant-carvings in, 13, 152, 204

Gower, Quotation from, 26

Grammar, Vullamy’s, 206

Great maple, 147, 148

Grief, Symbol of, 217

Growing mistletoe, 209

Guelder-rose, 29, 58

Gui de chéne, 208

Hack or hag-berry, 95

Hampton Court mistletoe, 214

Harlington yew, 61

Harrison, Description of England,
105, 138

Harte on stramonium, 187

Harte on yew, 62

Hartlib, Extract from, 138, 205, 240

Haws, hawthorn-berries, 9, 144

Hawthorn, 4, 145, 205

Hazel, 23, 157, 205, 213

Headache flower, 222

Heads of the poppy, 219

Hedge-parsley, 235

Heg-berry, 95

Hemlock and sheep, 63

Henbane, 120, 189

INDEX

Henbell, 194

Henry V., Extract from, 174

Flerba leonis, 216

Herbal of Dodoneus, 18

Herbs growing out of stones, 175

Hercules of the woods, 136

Herebachius and his book, 59

Herrick, Extract from, 67, 204

Hicket, Cure of the, 80

Hindberry, 87

Hips as a banqueting dish, 21

Histoire des Plantes Vénémeuses, 96

Historia Mundi of Pliny, 64

History of Rare Plants of Clusius,
235

Hog-bean, 193

Holland's translation of Pliny, 64,
132, 207

Holly, 82, 155, 203

Holm, 82, 156

Homer, reference to ash, 137

Honeysuckle, 76

Hood, Ode to Autumn, 62

Hooker on cranberry, 233

Hop, 38, 218

Horace, Extract from, 184

Hornbeam, 115

Horned poppy, 248

Horse as a prefix, 129

Horse-chestnut, 128, 205

Horses killed by yew, 63

Howel Dda, Laws of, 215

Hudibras on dewtry, 186

Hulver, 82, 156

Humulus Lupulus, 41

Hurts or bilberries, 179

Husbandman’s tree, 137

Hyacinth fruits, 43

Hyoscyamus niger, 193

Llex aquifolium, 156

Ilicine, 159

Imbrication of scales, 120
Impatiens fulva, 168
Impatiens noli-me-tangere, 169

255

Importation of timber, 138
Ina, Laws of, 107
Indigenous—What is it ? 215
Inebriated butterflies, 135
Insects on oak, 109

Tris fetidissima, 173

Tris pseudacorus, 164

Iris, The yellow, 164

Ivy, 43

JACK-HOP, 40

Jago, “ Edgehill,” of, 136

Joseph and Mary, or lungwort, 247
Judas and the elder, 175

Judgment of Paris, 112

June's Husbandrie, Extract from, 41
Juniper, 198

Juvenilla, Quotation from, 49

KEATS, Quotation from, 26, 132
Keys of the ash, 140

King Lear, Extract from, 8

King Richard IT., Extract from, 64
Kirk White, Quotation from, 11
Knee-holm, 185

Knights Tale, Extract from, 78
Knot-berry or Cloud-berry, 84

LACINIATE elder, 176

Lady of the Woods, 132
Lady’s comb, 247

L’Allegro, Quotation from, 11
Lament of Mary Queen of Scots, 54
Larch, 122

Larix europea, 122

Lauder on beech, 109

Laws of King Ina, 107
Leaves as bed-stuffing, 112
Lesser celandine, 224
Lethale, 197

Lightning, Protection from, 9
Lignum Sancte Crucis, 212
Ligustium vulgare, 16

Lilly, astrologer, 190

Lime, Mistletoe on, 205, 214

256

Lincolnshire bag-pipes, 176

Lingua passerina, 140

Linneus, Flora Lapponica, 236

Lithy-tree, 60

Lobel, botanist and physician, 40

Long bow, Use of the, 69

Lonicera periclymenum, 78

Loranthus Europeus, 206

Love-charms, 28

Lowe’s Yew-trees of Great Britain,
72

Lucretius, Extract from, 63

Lungwort, 247

Lupus salictarius, 42

Lyte’s translation of Dodonceus, 18

MaccuLLocu, Aftributes of God, 243

Maclean, badge of clan, 237

Maggot in nut, 26, 27

Make-peace, 136

Malic acid, 93

Mandrake, 187

Maniacum, 197 °

Mant on plane, 153

Maple, 151, 163, 205

Marsh-berry, 233

Marshwort, 232

Maser-tree, 152

Mast of beech, 114

Mast of oak, 104

Matthiolus, writer, 27, 193

Maundeville, Extract from, 10

May or hawthorn, 7

Maypole, 8

Meadow clover, 76

Meadow crowfoot, 226

Meal-berry, 235

Mealy-bush, 60

Medlar, 145, 205

Merry Wives of Windsor, Extract
from, 180

Mexican Tree-Worship, 11

Midsummer Night's Dream, Extract
from, 79

Milton, Quotation from, 11, 79

INDEX

Mistletoe, 47, 160, 202

Mithridates, Antidote of, 201

Moir on the yew, 73

Monk’s-hood, 187

Moneecious flowers, 102, 113, IIS,
119, 124, 127, 134

Moor-berry, 233

Moore, Quotation from, 11

Morbus terrestre, 87

Morocco leather, 18

Morus nigra, 147

Moss-berry, 233

Mountain ash, 142

Mountain bramble, 84

Mulberries from chestnut-trees, 126

Murray, Lord, his patent, 131

Myrtendorn, 185

Mystery of Husbandry, Extract from,
7) 177

Natural History of Bacon, 9
Natural Theology of Pliny, 210
Needles of Pine, 119

Nineveh, Sculptured slabs of, 11
Norden’s Surveyor's Dialogue, 137
Numa, Books of, 133

Nut-weevil, 26

Oak apples and galls, 107

Oak, The monarch, 99, 137, 163, 205
Ode to Autumn, Hood, 62

Offa and panage, 107

Oil-bearing fruits, 75, 114
Old-fashioned hedges, 81
Old-Man’s-Beard, 14

Oliver Twist, Extract from, 73
Omens from plants, 25, 27, 67
Opium, Home-grown, 223
Ople-tree, 31

Orfila on the nightshade, 38
Othello, Quotation from, 222

Our Ladys Comb, 247

Ovid on the Judgment of Paris, 112

PALACE oF DEatu, Extract from, 187

INDEX

Paley’s Natural Theology, 210

Palm Sunday and the yew, 67

Panage rights, 106, 107

Papaver Rheas, 222

Papilionaceous plants, 241

Paradise of Plants, Coles, 136

Parasitic plants, 47, 204

Paris, Judgment of, 112

Parkinson, Extract from, 60, 147, 183

Parrot, to kill, 63

Parsnip, 227

Pastinaca sativa, 228

Pastorals of Gay, 82, 198

Peacock butterfly, 135

Pear, Mistletoe on, 205

Pecten Veneris, 247

Pedunculate oak, 100

Pepper, Substitute for, 200

Peter-keys, 140

Petit Houx, 185

Phillip, Flora Historica, 187

Pinus sylvestris, 116

Piprage or pipperidge, 94

Plane, 153, 205

Platanus Orientalis, 153

Pliny, Reference to, 42, 64, 68, 87,
123, 141, 156, 184, 207

Poets on the yew, 66, 72

Poictiers, Victory of, 69

Polenta, A dish of, 128

Pop-gun making, 174

Poplar, Mistletoe on, 205

Poppy, 219, 221

Popular Names of British Plants, 222

Potentilla reptans, 130

Prim or primprint, 16

Primrose capsules, 43

Prior, Extract from, 62, 222

Privet, 15

Proverbs on the ivy, 50

Prunus communis, 53

Prunus Padus, 95

Purple Emperor butterfly, 109

Pyrus aucuparia, 142

Pyrus torminalis, 145

257

| QUARANTINE flag, 165
| Queen Mab's Chariot, 26

Quercus pedunculata, 100
Quercus robur, 100

RABBITS and carrot, 231

Raffaelle’s ‘‘ Transfiguration,” 123
Ranunculus, Species of, 223, 224
Raspberry, 85

Raspis, 87

Red Admiral butterfly, 135
Red-berried Bryony, 50, 52
Red-underwing moth, 109

Rhamnus catharticus, 18

Roasting chestnuts, 128
Roebuck-berry, 85

Roman introduction of chestnut, 124
Romant of the Rose, Extract from, 151
Rosa arvensis, 22

Rosa canina, 22

Rosa rubiginosa, 22

Rose-elder, 30

| Rose of Jericho, 243

Rowan, 142, 145, 205

Royal George, Timbers of the, 117
Rubus chamemorus, 84

Rubus cesius, 84

Rubus fruticosus, 84.

Rubus ideus, 85

Rubus saxatilis, 85

Ruscus aculeatus, 184

| Russian leather, 135

SACRED groves, II
Saint Jerome and Zacchzeus, 146
Saint Leonard’s Forest, 110

| Salt-fish and parsnips, 22

Salvator Rosa’s pictures, 125
Samara form of fruit, 150, 153
Sambucus nigra, 175

Sap green, The pigment, 18
Sap of sycamore, 149

Sap of the birch, 135
Sarothamnus scoparius, 244

| Saturnalia, The, 67, 155

17

258

Saturn, Planet of, 189

Savernake beeches, 109, III

Saxon Chronicle, The, 104

Scarlet maple, 152

Scarlet poppy, 220

Scotch pine or fir, 116

Scott, Quotation from, 62, 203

Seeds, Dispersion of, 102, 242

Selby on Forest Trees, 158

Serpent and ash-tree, 141

Service, 145, 205

Sessile-fruited oak, 100

Shakespeare, Quotation from, 8, 26,
47, 64, 79, 113, 136, 174, 180, 198,
209, 222

Shenstone, Quotation from, 79, 136

Shepherding and sentiment, 113

Shepherd's Calendar of Spenser, 8

Shepherd’s needle, 246

Shrew-ash, 141

Silchester, Excavations at, 55

Skeletonising of leaves, 192

Sleep produced by hops, 42

“ Slip-shucks,” 25

Sloe or blackthorn, 54

Snowball tree, 31

Solanum Dulcamara, 32

Solanum nigrum, 37

Somervile on furze, 246

Sorb-tree, 146

Spangles on oak, 108

Spanish chestnut, 124

Spearwort, 224, 226

Spellings of the word “ yew,” 68

Spenser, Quotation from, 8, 20, 69,
137; 175, 217

Spindelbaum, 57

Spindle-tree, 56

Spring, Thomson, 8, 177

Squirrel’s hoard, 25, 102, 127

Stadthius, Amsterdam, 117

Stanley on the yew, 73

Starch-making, 97, 131

Stellar influences, 189, 214

Stone-bramble, 85

INDEX

Storers and standils, 137

Stramonium, 187

Strawberry, 87, 218

Strawberry-tree, 182

Sunbury, Yew at, 73

Surveyors Dialogue of Norden, 137

Sussex smelting furnaces, 133

Swallow-tail butterfly, 232

Sweet Briar, 19

Sweet Sedge, 164

Swine’s flesh as food, 104

Sycamore, 146, 170, 205

“ Syder” as a drink, 177

Sylva Sylvarum, Extract from, 51, 89,
107, 155, 175, 229, 231

Symbolism, 217

Symphoniaca, 194

Syrupus e Coralliis composttus, 94

Syrupus pilosella, 91

Systema Agriculture of Worledge,
87, 110

Taming of the Shrew, Extract from,
24

Zamus communis, 50

Task, Cowper's, 114

Tavern sign, The ivy as, 50

Taxus baccata, 68

Tea substitute, 55

Teazel-heads, 248

Tempest, Extract from, 47, 239

Tennyson, his nature-study, 139

Theatrum Botanicum, Extract from,
60, 183

Theocritus, Extract from, 246

Theophrastus, Views of, 10, 205

Thomson, Extract from, 79, 177

Thorn-apple, 186

Tibur, The building of, 156

Timbers of the Royal George, 117

Title-page, Adam in Eden, 36

Toads and stones, 175

Touch-me-not, 168, 243

Toxophilus of Ascham, 69

Tragedy’of Children in the Wood, 82

INDEX

Tragus, his book, 148

Trailing dog-rose, 22

“ Transfiguration,” Raffaelle, 123

Traveller’s Joy, 13

Treatise of Fruit Trees, Austen, 14

Tree of life, 12

Tree worship, I!

Trunk of beech, 112

Trunk of yew, 61

Tunbridge ware, 158

Turner's Botanologia, 64

Turner's Herba/, 87, 153, 184

Tusser, Extract from, 41, 46, 81, 89,
105, 138, 197, 211, 240

UMBEL-BEARING plants, 227

Unchanging character of fir-woods,
119

Unedo, the strawberry-tree, 184

Unity in variety, 167

Vaccinium, Genus of, 179, 181, 232, |

233
Venice built on piles,
Venus’ comb, 247
Venus of the Woods, 136
Viburnum Opulus, 31
“Village Schoolmistress” of Shen-
stone, 136
Virgil, Reference from, 24, 31, 61, 137
Virginian creeper, 44
Virgin Mary, Dedication to, 247
Virgin's bower, 14
Viscum album, 202
Viscum cruciatum, 211
Vitis septentrionalium, 40
Vitruvius, Reference to, 123
Vullamy on mistletoe, 206

123

“)) 174

WALL-PAPER designs, Blocks for, 158
Walnut, Mistletoe on, 205
War, Effects of, 234

259

Wasser Schwertlilie, 166

Water buttercup, 226

Wayfaring-tree, 58

Westminster mistletoe, 209

Wey, American plant on, 168

Whin or gorse, 245

White bryony, 52

Whitethorn, 54

White vine, 52

Whortleberry, 179

Wiborg, experiments with yew, 63

Wiclif, Extract from, 90

Wild garden, Our, 218

Willow-wolf, 42

Wine as an irrigator, 155

Wines of our ancestors, 177,

Winged fruits, 135

Winstanly, Book of Knowledge, 190

Witchcraft antidote, 144

Witchen-tree, 144

Witches’ Cauldron, Macbeth, 64

Witches’ knots on birch, 134

Withers on the ivy, 49

Woodbine or wood bind, 78

Wood crowfoot, 226

Wood of the Holy Cross, 212

Wood-leopard moth, 109

Woodville, Experiment by Dr., 35

Woody nightshade, 32, 218

Wordsworth, Quotation from, 66, 118,
132

Worlidge, Extract from, 7, 87, 177

Worthing, plant-finds, 176, 189

Ls fe}

| YDRASIL, The mythologic, 142
| Yellow iris, 164, 218

Yew, 60

| Yew-trees of Great Britain, Lowe's,

72
Yoke-elm, 115

ZACCHAUS, Tree of, 146

_ PRINTED BY ,
HAZELL, WATSON, ‘AND VINEY, LD. A
LONDON AND AYLESBURY.

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