148 TYPES OF BRITISH PLANTS 
place is taken by a large, sheathing bract, which en- 
closes the whole group and takes the place of a calyx. 
The most striking feature of the family is the milky 
juice which pours from them in such abundance when 
the stem is broken. It is this milky juice, of course, 
from which, in the larger foreign species, we get india- 
rubber. 
In England, the spurges seem able to grow anywhere, 
on all kinds of soil, and in Asia and Africa they have 
been able to maintain themselves in waterless deserts; 
but have been obliged to modify their form. Leaves 
have been discarded as lending to evaporation, scales and 
hairs taking their place. The stems become thick and 
fleshy, in order to store up water whenever there is a 
chance, and the whole plant seems to take up artificial 
forms, the favourite being of the candelabrum type. 
Another subdivision, which includes many of our wild 
flowers, we may call the Goose-foot and the Persicaria 
group. If in your rambles you find some single- 
garmented flower, with the flowers probably in a rather 
straggling spike, it 1s amongst this group that you must 
look for its name. Greenish red or greenish white are 
the usual colours, and waste grounds or roadsides the 
favourite haunts. The Dock and the Sorrel are good 
and well-known examples of the general type, but there is 
one that is really handsome, though its name is lament- 
ably clumsy, and that is the Amphibious Persicaria. This 
may be found by, or in, almost any slow-running water, 
and bears a handsome spike of flesh-coloured flowers. 
Its cousin, the Buckwheat, largely grown as food for 
pheasants, has also some claims to beauty, and perhaps 
the Great Water Dock deserves our respect, for in olden 
days, before the Fens were drained, its leaves were the 
