RARER FLOWERS OF EAST 

 RENFREWSHIRE. 



By John Wood. 

 (Paper Read 3rd December, 1890.) 



Can anything rare or beautiful find a home in dirty, smoky, 

 wet and muddy Renfrewshire? Come and see. Let me take 

 you with me in imagination out from your mighty city's noise and 

 dust and bustle, out into the pleasant fields and along the green 

 burn-braes (for such things are) of my adopted county. Along 

 with me there need be no fear of surly keepers with ugly dogs ; 

 with me you are out of the treacherous domain of the fickle clerk 

 of the weather. 



Thornliebank to Darnley Toll. — Now then, let us be 

 off, and presto! at Thornliebank we catch the Capelrig ("from" 

 or "at the top of the ridge") Burn and ascend. We are here 

 above the works, and the stream is unpolluted. As soon as we 

 leave the road, on the burn's right bank, we come upon a 

 mass of garden escapes — -mallows, mulleins, horse radishes, 

 etc. — the result of the place having been used as a "coup" at 

 no distant date. Further up we enter the Rouken Glen, a very 

 pretty little spot indeed, with flowers such as the Omphalodes 

 verna, or creeping forget-me-not, of a cultivated character, and 

 with many nice ornamental shrubs. In the glen we find the 

 alternate-leaved golden saxifrage (Chrysosplenium alternifoliuni). 

 I do not think this plant is such a rare one as is usually supposed. 

 It is difficult to distinguish among the masses of its twin sister, 

 and this I take to be the main reason why it is so seldom found. 



