204 NOTES ON WILD PLANTS. 
Another garden plant which grows apparently 
wild in this same park, is the yellow tulip, tuzlipa 
sylvestris, of which the leaves appear plentifully 
every spring, but the plant is, as gardeners would 
say, a very shy flowerer. Other half-wild plants 
in the same place are two kinds of Star of Bethle- 
hem, ornithogalum umbellatum and O. nutans. 
The common columbine, aquilegia vulgaris, is 
another naturalized plant at Barton; it is indeed 
undoubtedly a native of the northern and western 
counties of England, growing amidst rocks and 
woods; but here, we can only look on it as a relic 
of gardens. It 1s still to be found here and there 
in the hedges about the so called Necton Hall, 
which was in old times a manor house, now 
divided into cottage tenements. I hardly know 
whether the bear’s foot hellebore, helleborus foetidus 
can be considered as a true native of this parish 
or not. It grows in some small copses on the 
home farm, and in those countries also where it is 
undoubtedly native it is a woodland plant; but 
the facts that it was very commonly cultivated in 
old gardens, and that it holds its ground very 
tenaciously where it has once been introduced, 
tend to throw some doubt on its claims. 
The colchicum or meadow saffron, colchicum 
autumnale, is a pretty flower, not common in 
England, though found in a good many counties ; 
it used to grow here in great abundance, especially 
in the park, till my father took pains to have it 
rooted out, because of its poisonous quality. It 
