238 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE 



almost entire exclusion of anything else. The plant has a 

 very heath-like appearance, its small evergreen leaves being 

 very simple in character and crowded on the stems. The 

 edges of the leaves are much rolled back, and from the 

 upper surface invisible. The flowers, a reddish-purple in 

 colour, are very minute, and spring from the axils of the 

 leaves, being found freely towards the extremities of the 

 stems. The flowering season is in May, and the flowers 

 are dioecious, the staminate flowers being on one plant 

 and the pistillate on another. In each we find a ring of 

 small scales as a base or cup, in the one case three rather 

 prominent stamens springing from it, and in the other 

 a short style, crowned by a nine-rayed stigma. 



The fruit is a fleshy globular berry, growing in clusters, 

 and ripening by about the beginning of September. It is 

 purplish-black in colour, glossy in surface, and about the 

 size of a pea, and, as it grows in these little groups around 

 the stem, distinctly attractive to the eye. To the taste 

 these berries are unpalatable, and if partaken of at all freely, 

 give rise to headache and other unpleasant indications that 

 they are not a particularly wholesome article of diet for 

 mankind, though the grouse, ptarmigan, and other moorland 

 birds seek them eagerly. The plant is called the crowberry 

 from its glossy black fruits, or sometimes the crakeberry, 

 the old Norse word for a crow being kraka. In Denmark 

 the plant is known as the krakeb'dr, and as we have 

 found many of our popular plant names to have descended 

 from Anglo-Saxon times, so, without doubt, crakeberry 

 is a memorial of the days of Danish invasion. Botanically 

 the crowberry is the Empetrum nigrum : the first name, 

 Greek in its origin, referring to the home of the plant 



