106 THE WOOD-SOREEL FAMILY. 



with ten stamens, the five inner ones longer than the five outer, and 

 five pistils, corresponding with the cells of the ovary. The latter 

 becomes a five-angled capsule, each of the five Sells provided Avith a 

 curious elastic lining, which inverts itself as soon as ripe, or if gently 

 squeezed between the fingers, like a pocket tui-ned inside out, and 

 darts out the seed to a distance of twenty inches. 



Two species are indigenous, and both belong to the Flora of Man- 

 chester. 



1. Flowers solitaiy, wliite, with purple veins, the peduncles and | Common 



the leaves both from the root, which is red and beaded. ... J Wood-sorkel. 



2. Flowers pale yellow, in umbels of two to four or five ; peduncles ] Yellow 



axillary ; stem branched and beai'ing leaves j Wood-soreel. 



HABITATS AND LOCALITIES. 

 1. Common Wood-sokrel — [Oxalis Acetosella.) 



Few are the groves and shady banks where the pencilled blos- 

 soms of this dainty little plant may not be found, like silver bells 

 among the moss, companions of the primrose and scentless violet, and 

 succeeding the anemones and the pilewort. The leaves, which are of 

 a most beautiful bright-green, and often purple underneath, are 

 scarcely in perfection till a little later in the season. A rich pink 

 variety has been gathered in Ashworth Wood and Cotterill Clough, 

 and probably occurs somewhere every year, among the crowd of blos- 

 soms '* born to blush unseen." Up to last year it grew abundantly 

 on a bank sloping to the north, near the Eccles Railway Station, but 

 the alterations of the road have now nearly effaced it. (J. S.) 

 Curtis, i. 104 ; E. B. xi. 702 ; Baxter, v. 327. 



Over and above the singular beauty of the little fair}', it is interesting from its 

 near approach to the nature of sensitive plants. All the Oxalidere have a ten- 

 dency this way, opening and closing their leaves with the changes of the atmos- 

 phere, and the alternations of light and darkness, and some are even sensitive to 

 the touch. The Acelosilla agrees wiili them in its deference to moisture and 

 sunshine, refusing only to make obeisance to the finger. The mode in which 

 the leaflets fold together is remarkable. While in pinnate leaves that close and 

 open, the leaflets draw together face to face ; here, as in the digitate leaf of the 

 lupine, which is like a wood-sorrel leaf on a great scale, they bend backwards and 

 downwards, and form a pyramid, the summit of the petiole becoming the apex. 

 The woodsorrel is the badge of the sister country, — 



Chosen leaf 



Of bard and chief. 



Old I'lnn's native Shann-nck 



