BLACKTHORN 1 
Yellow Tar, Yellow Fitchling, Lady’s Fingers, Mouse Pea, Crawpea, 
Tom Thumb Vetchling. 
EssENTIAL SPECIFIC CHARACTERS :— 
90. Lathyrus pratensis, L.—Stem climbing, angled, not winged, 
tendrils small, leaflets 2, narrow, lanceolate, stipules sagittate, as long 
as leaflets; flowers yellow, veined, flower-stalk many-flowered, in 
raceme, secund, hile small. ‘ 
Blackthorn (Prunus spinosa, L.) 
Preglacial, Interglacial, and Neolithic beds have yielded evidence 
of the early occurrence of this plant in Britain. In its present distri- 
bution it is confined to Europe, but the Bullace is found in Africa and 
the Himalayas, both in the Warm Temperate Zone. In Great Britain 
it is found south of Sutherland throughout the country, up to a height 
of 1300 ft. in Yorkshire. It is met with in Ireland and the Channel 
Islands. 
The Sloe is so common a wayside plant as scarcely to need descrip- 
tion. It is found not only by the highway, with Spindle, Maple, Crab, 
Hawthorn, Cornel, and Elder, but also in the hedgerows, in fields, and 
in woods, forming dense brakes in the latter, or in the open, where the 
Blackthorn blossoms make the otherwise dark growth of branches 
quite white in early spring. 
As the Latin specific name indicates this plant is peculiarly spinous, 
which separates it from P. zzs¢z¢zt7a, where there are few spines. The 
plant is a bushy tree with numerous interlacing branches, rigid. 
The Sloe has the shrub habit. It is small, rigid, much-branched, 
the branches spreading, zigzag, spinous (hence sfzzosa), the spines 
being arrested branches. The wood is hard and tough. The bark is 
black. The leaves appear after the flowers. They are egg-shaped, 
or oblong to lance-shaped, stalked, and vary considerably in form, in 
the acuteness of the leaf, and in the length of the stalk. They are 
downy below when young, later hairless, and are toothed. 
The flowers are white, }—8 in. across, shortly-stalked, the stalks 
solitary or in pairs, hairless. The petals are inversely egg-shaped to 
oblong, and vary in breadth. The fruit is a drupe, the flesh adhering 
to the stone, round. When the carpel becomes the fruit the layers are 
three, the skin or epicarp, the flesh or mesocarp, and the inner stony 
endocarp, the three forming the pericarp, the seed being the kernel 
within the stone. There are two ovules, one often being unde- 
veloped. 
