RARER FLOWERS OF EAST RENFREWSHIRE. 5 1 



Near Nitshill railway station there is one nice bed of the yellow 

 toadflax (Linaria vulgaris) and a considerable quantity of its rarer 

 and more lowly sister, the least toadflax {£. minor). The latter 

 has a very decided partiality for railways. 



At Hurlet we find adder's-tongue fern {Ophioglossum vulgatum); 

 Veronica Buxbaumii — like V. agrestis in leaf and stem, and like 

 V. Chamcedrys in its large, beautiful, clear blue flowers. In various 

 of the gardens about and on the railway banks one occasionally 

 gathers good specimens of the treacle mustard {Erysimum cheir- 

 anthoides), but the plant, a South of England one, is not constant 

 with us. 



On the banks of the Levern near Househill House there grows 

 a fair quantity of the hop plant {Hamulus Lupulus). The flowers 

 in the bed are all staminal ones, hence the plant may have been 

 washed down stream after being thrown out as rubbish from 

 some of the gardens higher up. On the Glasgow and Barrhead 

 roadside near this there is plenty of hemlock (Conium maculatum) 

 — enough, in fact, to poison half the people of the county. 

 Beyond the road, and near Hawkhead policy wall, one whole 

 field is covered in the season with the beautiful, rosy (rarely white) 

 pea-blossoms of the rest-harrow {Ononis arvensis). The plants 

 are of the prostrate variety. The upright variety is met with on 

 the roadside half-way between Hurlet and Renfrew. 



Levernholme Wood. — In Levernholme Wood we find lords- 

 and-ladies {Arum maculalum), asarabacca {Asarum europmim), 

 woody spiraea {Spircea salicifolia), lungwort {Pulmonaria officinalis), 

 etc. The arum, unique among our flowering plants, develops its 

 curious spathe freely in the wood where it is well shaded. At 

 Crookston Castle, in the old moat there is plenty of it, healthy 

 enough, but it never flowers, not being in the shade. The spathe 

 of the arum is a sort of insect shebeen. Small beetles and flies 

 enter it, and as it is to the interest of the flower for purposes of 

 fertilization to detain them inside, they forthwith get intoxicated 

 with the strong juices the plant provides, and as they cannot find 

 their way out for a time, they stay within in one big drunken spree. 

 "There's no drunkenness or debauchery among the lower 

 animals," say -the teetotalers. Is there not? Why, the very beetles 

 and flies, of both sexes and of all ages, when they get the 



