148 FLOWERS OF THE ROADSIDES AND HEDGES 
was afterwards taken away the sacred contact with the mallow had 
changed it into a Geranium. 
It was called Herba Robertus in the fourteenth century, and 
Sadroc. It was used as a vulnerary, on the Doctrine of Signatures, 
because the whole plant is blood-red in colour. It is astringent, and 
was used for ulcers, scrofula, &c. It has an unpleasant smell when 
rubbed, and for this reason was considered as a remedy for the 
unmentionable insects. 
ESSENTIAL SPECIFIC CHARACTERS :— 
68. Geranium robertianum, L.—Stem branched, spreading, leaves 
ternate or quinate, leaflets pinnatifid, flower red or pink, small, sepals 
hairy, capsule wrinkled, hairy. 
Spindle Wood (Euonymus europzeus, L.) 
No trace of this small tree has been found in Glacial or other 
beds. It is distributed throughout Europe as far east as the Caucasus, 
and in North Africa, and West Siberia. In Great Britain it is 
absent from Radnor, N. Lincs, S. and Mid Lancs, Isle of Man, as 
far as Kirkcudbright, and elsewhere it is found only in Roxburgh, 
Berwick, Edinburgh. It is thus rare in Scotland, and in Ireland quite 
local. 
The Spindle Tree is principally a woodland species, but it occurs 
here and there as a hedgerow plant along the roadside. It grows 
along with other shrubs in the plantation mixed with Field Maple, 
Holly, and Hawthorn, or scattered about in the midst of oak planta- 
tions. It is a bushy shrub or small tree with quadrangular or square 
stem, the bark green, grey in older stems, smooth, strongly smelling, 
with long, acute, opposite leaves slightly toothed, on short leaf- 
stalks. 
The flowers are greenish-white, umbellate, or in an umbel, the four 
acute petals oblong, 4-cleft, and with 4 anthers, as many as ten flowers 
on one cyme, which is often dichotomous. The flower-stalks are long, 
the capsules are 4-lobed, deep, and, when the fruit is ripe, of a beauti- 
ful rose or orange-crimson colour, like a capsicum, and the seeds, which 
are not truncate, are enclosed in an orange arillus or covering of a 
fleshy nature. 
The Spindle Tree is from 5 to 20 ft. high. The flowers are in 
bloom in May and June. The capsules are 4—5-celled, and are ripe 
about September, when they are red and especially attractive and con- 
spicuous. The plant is a deciduous shrub increased by seed. The 
