Il8 LINUM PERENNE. PERENNIAL FLAX. 



tissimum, or " most useful " Flax, of which Mrs. Howitt wrote, 

 and whicli is an annual, dying after the seed has ripened, w^iile 

 ours is a perennial species, the plant continuing on from year 

 to year. Its continuous growth is, indeed, remarkable. In the 

 early spring w^e find it little more than a small tuft of green 

 leaves, but it soon throws up from each bud a flower-shoot 

 which by May is covered with blossoms. It does not commence 

 to bloom till it has made its full length, and then the uppermost 

 fliov/er opens first. After this the lateral ones open continu- 

 ously from the side branches downwards. Those branches 

 which flower first naturally mature first. By September the 

 flowering stems have nearly all ripened, and commenced to turn 

 brown. Other branches, however, still continue to push out 

 from the lower buds on the main shoots ; but as if they had an 

 instinctive knowledge that there would not be time to ripen 

 seed before the winter sets in, they make no attempt to flower. 

 These late-growing shoots are just as vigorous as those which, 

 in the early part of the season, threw up flower-stems, and their 

 office seems to be to elaborate sap, and store up nourishment in 

 the crown for next year's floral growth. It is, no doubt, this 

 autumn crop of growth which is the real agent in making our 

 Flax a i^erennial, while the closely allied European species is an 

 annual. If the latter had its flower-stalks cropped so as to force 

 it to throw out a late, leafy growth below, it would, probably, be 

 as perennial as the American species, and still more " astir with 

 life " than the jDoetess describes it. The plant in the writer's 

 garden, brought many years ago from Colorado, and from which 

 our drawing was made, is one of the most interesting in the 

 collection, in early winter, by the mass of living green shoots 

 pushing up so freely among the mature and dry stems. 



These seed-bearing branches of our Perennial Flax have 

 assumed a new interest since the writings of Mr. Darwin 

 appeared. He finds that some of the flowers of this species 

 have styles longer, and others shorter, than the stamens, and that 

 only the pollen of one plant carried to the flowers of the other 



