112 FIELD AND WOODLAND PLANTS 



lobes. The flowers are coloured with varied proportions of yellow, 

 white, and purple ; and the lower petal, which is the broadest, is 

 usually purple at the base. This species flowers from May to the 

 end of the summer. 



In damp meadows, and especially near ditches and in marshy 

 ground, we meet with the Ragged Robin [Lychnis Flos-cucidi of the 

 order Garyophyllacece) This is an erect plant, from one to two 

 feet high, with a viscid stem that is shghtly downy and never 

 much branched. The leaves are few and small, the upper ones 

 sessile and the lower stalked. The pretty red or rose-coloured 

 flowers are arranged in a very loose terminal panicle, and have no 

 scent. The petals are each divided into four very narrow lobes, of 

 which the two middle ones are longest ; and the fruit is a broad oval 

 capsule, which opens, when ripe, by five teeth. The flowers appear 

 first in May, and continue to bloom till the end of June or the 

 beginning of July. 



Several spring-flowering leguminous plants (order Leguminosce) 

 are to be found in fields and meadows, and of these we will first 

 notice the Spotted Medick [Medicago maculata), generally ea,sily 

 distinguished by the dark spot in the centre of the leaflets of its 

 trifohate leaves. It is a smooth plant, with procumbent, branching 

 stems varying from six inches to two feet in length. There are 

 fine, spreading hairs on the leafstalks, and the leaflets are obcordate 

 and toothed. At the base of each leafstalk there is a pair of toothed 

 stipules. The small, yellow flowers are in short, dense racemes, 

 only a few in each cluster ; and the pods are Httle compact spirals, 

 almost globular in general form, with three or four ridges, and a 

 central furrow broken by a number of fine, curved prickles. The 

 plant is abundant in the southern counties of England and Ireland, 

 where it grows on pasture -land, flowering from May to near the end 

 of the summer. 



The Netted Medick [M. denticulata), of the same genus, is a 

 similar plant, flowering during the same period, and often seen in 

 the southern and eastern counties of England, especially in fields 

 near the coast. Its prostrate stems are of the same length as those 

 of the Spotted Medick ; and its leaves are also very similar, 

 but the stipules are bordered with very fine teeth. The flowers 

 are in small, yellow heads ; and the pod forms a loose, flat spiral 

 of two or three coils, deeply netted on the surface, and bordered 

 with curved prickles. 



We have next to note several species of Trefoils (genus Tri- 



