302 



FIELD AND WOODLAND PLANTS 



In similar situations we may find the Lesser Burnet or Salad 

 Burnet [Poterium Sanguisorha) of the same order. This plant is 

 so different in general appearance from the majority of the Rose 

 family that the amateur would hardly associate it with the others. 

 The flowers are small, and collected together in dense, purple cymes 

 on the top of long, angular stalks. They have no petals, and the 

 four overlapping sepals are usually deciduous. The stamens, five 



to thirty in number, are 

 pendulous on long, slender 

 filaments ; and the upper 

 flowers display their crimson 

 stigmas before the lower 

 ones produce their stamens. 

 The stem is erect, from six 

 to eighteen inches in height ; 

 and the pinnate leaves have 

 many small, sessile, oblong 

 leaflets with coarsely-serrate 

 edges. This plant flowers 

 during June, July, and 

 August. 



The Bedstraw Family 

 (order Ruhiacece) is repre- 

 sented on the chalk by the 

 Rough-fruited Corn Bed- 

 straw [Galium income), 

 which is common in fields. 

 It is a spreading plant, with 

 procumbent stems, one to 

 three feet long ; and small, 

 long, narrow leaves, rough with recurved prickles, arranged in 

 whorls of from six to eight. The flowers are small and white, 

 grouped in little cymes of three. The fruit is comparatively large, 

 and granulated, but not bristly, and it droops by the bending of 

 the pedicel. The plant flowers from June to October. 



The Red Spur Valerian [Centranthus ruber — order Valerianacece) 

 is a glaucous, leafy plant (see Plate VIII), sometimes growing to a 

 height of two feet or more, often to be seen in chalk-pits and lime- 

 stone quarries, and frequently on old walls. It is not indigenous, 

 but is cultivated largely as a garden flower, and has now become 

 naturalised. Its corolla, which is sometimes white, has five unequal 



THE FIELD aSNTIAN. 



