2i8 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE 



rich adornment for the love-favoured, the love-bestowing 

 fair one, who shall have bestowed upon her " a goodly 

 chaplet of azured columbine," while her coronet shall be 

 wreathed with sweetest eglantine, and all goodly things 

 pressed into the service to do her honour. 



The columbine was, like the better-known badge of 

 the broom, one of the heraldic cognisances of the royal 

 House of Plantagenet. One finds it sometimes in old stained- 

 glass illuminations and the like, as the device of divers 

 nobles. It may be seen, for instance, in an easily accessible 

 example, in the spandrils of the brass of Sir Peter Courtenay 

 in Exeter Cathedral. He died in the sixth year of the 

 reign of King Henry IV, 



The fruit of the columbine is constructed of five carpels 

 grouped together, and these we find, on opening them, to 

 be full of smooth, dark, shining seeds. These seed re- 

 ceptacles presently open of themselves on maturity, and 

 the seeds fall to the ground. They germinate very freely, 

 so that the plant, once fairly established, is not easily 

 dispossessed of its holding. 



In one portion of our garden it is our delight to 

 grow divers plants that we have transported from hedge 

 or moorland, river-bank or forest. Here may be 

 found primroses, foxgloves, wild geraniums, alkanet, 

 coltsfoot, the celandines, strawberry, grass of Parnassus, 

 yellow iris, snapdragon, stone-crop, cinquefoil, Solomon's 

 seal, lilies of the valley, daffodils, globe flower, bryony, 

 bindweed, bird's-foot trefoil, hop, woody night-shade, 

 bramble, blue cornflower, valerian, leopard 's-bane, money- 

 wort, and many other interesting wildlings. Amongst 

 these will be seen the columbine, and we find it sur- 



