THE GOOSEBERRY FAMILY. 329 



8. Woodruff — {Asperula odordta.) 



Shady woods and doughs, abundant. Marple Wood ; Styal ; Red- 

 dish ; Cotterill ; Boggart-hole Clough. Fl. May, June. 



Curtis, ii. 232 ; E. B. xi. 755 ; Baxter, i. 46. 



A truly elegant little plant, with snow-white blossoms, the herbage scentless 

 when fresh, but aromatic when dry. 



The only plants of this family grown in gardens are the woodruff and the 

 Crucianella stylosa, the latter with Hlac flowers borne in pretty terminal umbels. 



C— THE GOOSEBERRY FAMILY. Grossuldceee. 



Shrubs, occasionally armed with thorns. Leaves alternate, exsti- 

 pulate, on long petioles, fan-lobed in three or five divisions, and 

 usually serrate. Flowers axillary and solitary, or in axillary racemes. 

 Calyx five-parted, often the largest and shewiest part of the blossom ; 

 petals five, regular, frequently minute ; stamens five, very small ; 

 ovary single, underneath the blossom, ripening into a juicy berry, and 

 bearing the withered relics of the flower upon its summit. The seeds 

 are suspended among the pulp by long stalks. 



Natives of the mountains, woods, and thickets of all the temperate 

 parts of Eiirope, Asia, and America, but unknown in Africa. In 

 America they are particularly abundant. It is from that country we 

 have received the splendid Ribes sangu'ineum, or scarlet-flowering 

 currant, which hangs out its copious racemes to the earliest sunshine 

 of the spring ; the Ribes speciosum, or scarlet -flowering gooseberry, 

 and the Ribes aiireum, or golden-flowered gooseberry, the latter almost 

 as common as the sanguineurn. The Ribes lacustre and two or three 

 other species are cultivated as garden ornaments, but they are of little 

 pretension. Nearly a hundred are known in all, the properties of 

 the common currant and gooseberry being those of the generality, 

 except that in any but such as are cultivated for their fruit, a mawkish 

 or extremely acid taste stands in place of the agreeable flavour for 

 which the latter are esteemed. 



Four grow wild in England, and all of them near Manchester. 

 Whether any but the mountain currant be truly indigenous, is rather 

 doubtful. 



