130 OUR COMPOUND FLOWERS. 



The Syngeuesia most interesting to the local Botanist are the 

 Bidens tripartita and cemua, the Centaurea scabiosa, and the Hel- 

 minthia, which have each of them but a single habitat in our district. 

 The Helminthia is here found on the northern bank of the Tweed, 

 although it is not yet registered in the Flora Scotica ; and to that 

 Flora Senecio erucifolius was first added by the Rev. A. Baird, a 

 member of the "Club." Another member, Dr. R. D. Thomson, 

 first drew that degree of attention to our Tragopogon which led to 

 its true designation. The Lactuca virosa apparently attains a size 

 on the banks of the Tweed much beyond what it rises to in other 

 districts, where its height is usually stated to be from two to four 

 feet ; but whether this is owing to its habitat, being with us inva- 

 riably in a soil overlying sandstone, or to superior shelter, I cannot 

 say. The Crepis succissefolia, and three or four of our Hieracia, are 

 sought after from their sparing distribution in our island. In another 

 sense no plant of the order equals in interest the Scotch Thistle, and 

 it behoves the botanist to aid the antiquary in the right determina- 

 tion of the species. The plant carried in the processions of Free- 

 masons is the Onopordum acanthium*, and the friends of Burns have 

 planted this tall and stately thistle around his grave in Dumfries, — 

 forgetful surely of the inappropriateness of planting an alien over the 

 remains of him whose boast it was to sing, in wood notes wild, the 

 rural scenes and rural pleasures of his native soil in his native 

 tongue f. The preference the Onopordum has thus obtained is 

 solely from its size and erect mode of growth ; and I am informed, 

 by an old mason, that so satisfied are initiated gardeners of this, that 

 it is usual for them to stick upon its strong spines the heads of 

 the Milk-Thistles. This, in the Flora of Berwick-upon-Tweed, was 

 assumed to be the " emblem dear to Scotland's sons," — an assump- 

 tion which has been controverted by Mr. Dovaston, who made the 

 question " an object of most particular inquiry." "We were," says 

 Mr. Dovaston, " told by an intelligent gentleman in the Hebrides, 

 Donald M'Lean, a young chieftain, that what he showed us, the 

 Carduus eriophorus, was the Scotch Thistle. At Inverness, Sir 

 James Grant said the Scotch Thistle was the only one that drooped, 

 Carduus nutans. After many such remarks, we were at length told 

 by a very intellectual gardener at Roslin, and by Sir William Drum- 

 mond at Hawthornden, that no particular Thistle, but any Thistle 

 the poet or painter chose, was the national flower of Scotland ; and 

 this opinion we heard repeated in Edinburgh, at the tables of several 

 learned and hospitable gentlemen. Though generally emblematical 



* "What is denominated by gardeners the Scotch Thistle, is Onopor- 

 dum acanthium, a plant doubtfully native of Scotland." Balfour's Manual, 

 p. 440. 



t The Carduus lanceolatus was the Thistle which Burns himself con- 

 sidered to be the Scotch Thistle : — 



" The rough Bur-thistle spreading wide 

 Amang the bearded bear, 

 I turn'd the weeder-clips aside, 

 And spared the symbol dear." 



