STRA WBERR Y-TREE 1 83 



or of a summons to Rome, the monks of Mucross Abbey 

 may have introduced it ; and the plant, finding itself in a 

 soil and climate congenial to it, settled down, and gradually 

 asserted its right to a place in our Flora. 



The flowers of the strawberry-tree are produced in 

 August, the fruit ripening in the following Summer. These 

 flowers are of a pale greenish-white often tinged with pink, 

 and grouped in clusters at the ends of the stems. They are 

 in form much like the bells of a heath, or of the lily 

 of the valley. 



The berry is of a crimson red colour," globular, and of 

 a curiously granulated surface, and suggesting, at a casual 

 glance, a strawberry. On cutting it across we find it to be 

 five-celled and many-seeded. We have, in Plate XXIX., 

 a drawing of the foliage and fruit. Ovid writes of " the 

 arbutus laden with blushing fruit." The berries, as we 

 see in our illustration, are pendant. 



When the tree was brought across from the Emerald 

 Isle, to find a welcome place in our English shrubberies 

 and gardens, seems not to be at all known. Parkinson 

 merely says, we see, in his Theatrum Botanicum, published 

 in 1640, that " it came to us from Ireland " ; while Evelyn, 

 writing in the reign of Charles II., declares that " the 

 arbutus is too much neglected by us ; making that a rarity 

 which grows so common and naturally in Ireland. One 

 name of the plant is the Cain's Apple, the unpleasant 

 inference being that the globular crimson fruits are a 

 reminder of the life-blood of the murdered Abel. 



Though the fruit is sometimes eaten, no hint as to 

 its strawberry-like appearance sufllices to save it from being 

 called by various critics harsh, tasteless, unpalatable, most 



