14 WILD, OR XATIVE FLOWERS. 



the delicate fringed flowers, and have given rise to the local name in 

 some places of " Gem-flower." Nearly allied to the above is the wood- 

 land flower 



False Miirewort. — Tiarella coi'difolia, (L. ) 



to which the name Wood Mignonette is often given, not with respect to- 

 ils scent, for there is no particularly agreeable odour in the flower, and 

 the leaves are somewhat coarse and pungent in quality ; but for the 

 beauty of the light graceful blossoms which are white with orange tipped 

 or light tawny brown anthers. The petals are pointed and five in 

 number ; stamens ten, long and slender ; styles, two ; seed vessel, two- 

 valved ; the base of the pistil is thickened, forming a turban-like pod. 



There are two forms of our pretty " Wood Mignonette" — one with 

 closer, more globular, heads of flowers, the other with the flowers looser 

 and more scattered. Both affect the rich black mould and shade of the 

 forest trees. 



The plant might be called evergreen, as the leaves appear green 

 and fresh from beneath the covering of Winter's snow. The large flat 

 sharply-toothed, lobed, leaves are shaded in the centre with purple ; the 

 veinings also blackish purple, and the surface is beset with very short 

 appressed hairs. The leaf stalks of the young plants are of a reddish 

 pink and hairy at their junction with the root. 



^^'oOD Betonv — Pediadaris Canadensis., (L.) 



This plant is commonly found in open grassy thickets and plain- 

 lands. Of the two common species, we have one with dark, dull red 

 flowers, and another with yellow. It is a rather coarse flower ; the spike 

 leafy, hairy and rough ; the leaves are divided into many rounded lobes, 

 toothed at the margins, and deeply cleft, nearly to the mid rib, turning 

 black in drying. The yellow flowered is a smaller plant than the red ; 

 the foliage is much more hairy, and the lipped blossoms are also hairy, 

 the upper lip arched over the lower lobes of the corolla. I think it must 

 be a distinct variety, or even species. Lindley remarks in his " Natural 

 System,'" that the Betony is acrid in quality but that it is eaten by goats : 

 unluckily we have no goats in Canada to benefit by the herbage of this 

 homely plant. 



Flowirini; \\'int[;r-Green — Polygala paiici/olia, (Willd.) 



This is one of our early flowering plants, distinguished by the 

 common name of "Winter-green." It belongs to a family of well- 



