POPPY TRIBE 37 



tubercles, cylindrical, and from 6 to 10 inches long. Plant biennial. Our 

 sea-beaches have mostly a barren aspect, for flowers and trees are scarce 

 upon them. Here and there a little patch of green enlivens them, or a wild 

 flower springs up among them, but these are few and far between. The 

 Yellow Horned Poppy is decidedly their greatest floral ornament ; and it 

 grows so near to the sea, that in winter the high waves almost reach its 

 clumps of evergreen foliage, and little balls of snowy spray linger among the 

 leaves. From June to August its yellow blossoms quiver before the breezes, 

 from stony beach, or sand-hill or cliff, or whatever soil forms the ocean's 

 margin, unless it be the salt marsh. Few objects are more beautiful on an 

 early summer morning, when all the minute points of its rough leaves are 

 beset with the pearls of dew, and the sieklo-like pod waves above the newly- 

 expanding blossom. According to the Greek mythology, Grlaucus Avas the 

 name of a fisherman who leaped into the sea, and " by transmutation strange " 

 became a sea-god. Hence, too, the word "glaucous," which is commonly 

 used by botanists to express the pale sea-green colour of the foliage of many 

 plants growing near the sea, and the pale-green powder with which they are 

 covered, as is the plum with its bloom. Agnes Strickland has described 

 some of the flowers which deck the verge of the ocean : — 



" The wild sea clitf, though rude it be, 

 Is wreath'd with many a flower. 

 That blossoms there unscathed and free, 

 Through storm and shower. 



" There bright as gems of fairy lore, 

 Or Eastern poet's dream, 

 The horned poppies gild the shore 

 With sunny gleam. 



" The red bind to the barren soil 

 Clings safe 'mid all alarms, 

 While drowning seamen faintly toil 

 AVith fainting arms." 



Older poets told, too, of the Horned Poppy, and the powers which the 

 superstitious believed it to possess. Ben Jonson, in the Witches' Song, 

 says,— 



" Yes, I have brought to help our vows 

 ] lorned poppy, cypress boughs, 

 The fig-tree wild that grows on tombs, 

 And juice that from the larch-tree comes." 



The light of Revelation, which has dawned on every British village, and 

 brought its teachings to hall and cottage, has dispelled fancies and practices 

 which Avere sanctioned in other times, and none dream now of gathering the 

 Poppy for incantations. It is very acrid in its nature, and was formerly 

 used as a medicine in various disorders. It has a dark-yellow spindle-shaped 

 root, like a small carrot in appearance, but having no resemblance to it in its 

 mild and nutritious qualities ; and it is said, if eaten, to occasion madness. 



2. Scarlet Horned Poppy {G. phainiceiim). — Pod hairy; stem-leaves 

 deeply pinnatifid and cut ; stem hairy. Plant annual. This flower, which 

 has the long pods that led him who first named the genus to designate it 

 Horned, is in blossom in June and July. It is a showy scarlet flower, with 



