32 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE 



mentioned plants in his poems, and amongst these we find 

 reference to the Viburnum^ but it is not at all possible 

 to assign satisfying English equivalents to many of his 

 plant-names, and the present case is one of these many. 

 If we venture so far as to say that perhaps his plant was 

 the guelder rose, and that more probably it was not, we have 

 travelled as far as we dare go in this direction. In the 

 middle ages the monks, who were the great herbalists of 

 those days, ministering alike to the souls and bodies of men, 

 gave the Latinised name of Opulus to our tree, and this 

 by the common people was corrupted to ople-tree, the 

 name by which Gerard and other writers on plants in 

 the vulgar tongue refer to it. We have high authority 

 for declaring that a rose by any other name would be 

 as sweet, and our present plant, whether we call it ople or 

 elder, or anything else, is a charming acquisition to our 

 goodly store of woodland wealth of beauty. 



WOODY NIGHTSHADE (Solanum Dulcamara) 



The woody nightshade, Solanum Dulcamara, claims 

 next our attention. It is figured on Plate VI. and one 

 or two points will probably at once attract our notice 

 as we study its likeness. Our assumption, by the way, 

 that our representation is a likeness will not, we trust, 

 shock our readers, for it, and its fellows are, to the best 

 of our ability, true presentments. In all cases our studies 

 have been made directly from Nature, and no leaf, or 

 flower, or berry, in these pages but had its living 

 counterpart. 



The first point that cannot fail to attract notice is 



