132 THE STORY OF PLANT LIFE 



regarded as a casual. It has been observed in the 

 Channel Islands. 



The habitat is waste places, or cultivated ground 

 generally. Black Bittersweet is not uncommon in 

 allotment gardens. I have seen it growing on the 

 chalk in the Eastern Counties about the borders of 

 a heath, adjacent to old quarries. It is found also 

 elsewhere on the chalk with Deadly Nightshade. 



As noted, the habit is erect. The branches of the 

 stem are spreading, and the angles are swollen, the 

 whole plant smooth as a rule. The leaves are ovate 

 to rhomboid, with a wavy border, or toothed, and 

 stalked. 



Borne in an umbel-like, small, lateral cyme, the 

 flowers are few, white, drooping, on short stalks. The 

 calyx-lobes are broad and blunt. The corolla has the 

 segments fringed with hairs and bent back. The 

 berries are small, round, black as a rule, or green, 

 yellow, or reddish, and the stalks are thicker above. 



Sometimes the plant is 2 ft. in height, but usually 

 about I ft. The flowers are in bloom in June onward 

 to November. The plant is a herbaceous annual. 



The flowers are conspicuous, the yellow anthers 

 rendering them the more so. In the allied Woody 

 Nightshade, there are " sham nectaries," as Miiller 

 terms them, at the base of the flower, which may be 

 pierced and sucked by insects. The anthers and 

 stigma ripen at the same time, and, if insects do not 

 visit the flower, there will, as a rule, be self-pollina- 

 tion. The flowers droop and close at night. 



