220 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE 



that includes the fennel, celery, parsley, and carrot of our 

 vegetable gardens, and the hemlock, water dropwort, 

 hog's-fennel, hog-weed, and many other species amongst 

 our wild growths. In like manner we presently deal with 

 the broom as representative of the great order of pod- 

 bearers, and therefore standing for the peas, scarlet-runners, 

 lupins, and the like of our gardens, and the birdsfoot 

 trefoil, kidney-vetch, furze, and many other pod-producing 

 plants in our fields and hedgerows. 



One repeatedly comes across the statement that we 

 have but two scarlet wildflowers in Britain — the poppy 

 and the pimpernel ; but such a statement requires a con- 

 siderable amount of correction, since there is more than 

 one kind of British poppy that is scarlet, while on the 

 other hand the pimpernel, sometimes emphatically called 

 the scarlet pimpernel, has yet nothing like the depth and 

 intensity of colour in its blossoms that we find in the 

 poppies. It is not really scarlet at all, but what may be 

 perhaps termed a terra-cotta red, or, may be, salmon-colour. 

 The colour is a very refined and delicate one, and defies 

 the limited nomenclature of the colour-man. When it 

 comes to trying to imitate it, in painting the flower, we 

 may perhaps best think of it as a colour that would be 

 scarlet if more intense. We cannot call it a pale scarlet, 

 as there is no such colour : scarlet is scarlet and it is 

 nothing else. The flowers of the pheasant's eye, magnificent 

 in strength of colour as they are, are more crimson really 

 than scarlet. 



