Great Hedge - 

 bindweed. 



Small Field- 

 bindweed. 



230 THE CONVOLVULUS FAMILY. 



Three species grow wild in England, and two of them near Man- 

 chester. 



1. Stem twining to the length of many feet over hedges and\ 



bushes. Leaves arrow-shaped, the lobes at the base abrupt, 

 as if the points had been cut oil' ; flowers solitary and axil- 

 lary, on square peduncles, with a pair of large, heart-shaped Y 

 and leaf-like bracts immediately beneath the calyx ; corolla 

 pure white, or sometimes tinged with pink, two or two and 

 a half inches across at the rim / 



2. Stems rarely more than two feet long, prostrate on the ground,'' 



or, if support be at hand, slightly climbing. Leaves ovate- 

 arrow-shaped, the lobes at the base pointed ; flowers axil- 

 lary, usually in pairs, with two or three small bracts at a 

 distance from the calyx; corolla pink, or pinkish-white, 

 often with darker plaits, an inch or a little more in diameter, 

 fragrant, and very pretty 



HABITATS AND LOCALITIES. 



1. Great Hedge-bindweed — (Convolvulus septum.) 

 Hedges in moist ground, common everywhere. A variety with red- 

 striped flowers has been gathered at Whitefield by James Percival, 

 jim. Fl. July — October. 



Curtis, i. 13 ; E. B. v. 313. 



In the wild convolvulus we have another example of great beauty of form com- 

 bined with habits that make the plant a pernicious weed. The flowers are of the 

 chastest white, and among the largest and handsomest of our native Flora; but 

 when once the plant has established itself in a hedge, or among bushes in a 

 garden, every year it twines its strangling roots and stems closer and closer, the 

 mass of foliage becoming so dense as quite to conceal what is underneath, and by 

 degrees to smother and destroy it. To eradicate the plant is almost impossible, 

 without at the same time uprooting its victim. The large white bells, as they 

 hang upon the hedges in dewy autumn mornings, are strikingly beautiful. The 

 reader of Virgil will remember them as the shepherd's "alba ligustra." 



2. Small Field-bindweed — {Convolvulus arvensis.) 



Dry waysides, among short grass, and in dry fields, rare. Below 

 Bowdon old Church, sparingly. Between Northen and Cheadle. 

 Plentiful in a wood near Parr-fold Farm, Worsley. (J. E.) Abundant 

 between Tyldesley and Little Hulton. (R. H.) Empshaw Lane, 

 Stockport, on a sand-bed by the turning at the Shakspcre Inn for 

 Offerton. (Mr. Isaac "Williamson.) Bent Lane and Townfield Lane, 

 Warburton, plentiful. (Mrs. Browncll.) Fl. June, July. 



Curtis, i. 8.') ; E. B. v. 312. 



