80 CISTINE^ 



clumps on the garden beds. On the rocks of Greece, as well as those of 

 Palestine, the Cistus shrubs are very abundant, and all the genera abound 

 most on dry and elevated spots, some of them being natives of almost all the 

 countries of the world. The balsam called Ladanum, which is so much 

 used as a perfume in Greece and in Oriental countries, and which is prized for 

 its tonic and stomachic properties, is produced by the Cistus creticus. Southey 

 has described the fragrance of the Cistus plants : 



' ' The forest or the lonely heath wide spread, 

 Where Cistus shrubs sole seen, exhaled at noon 

 Their line balsamic odour all around, 

 Strew'd with their blossoms, frail as beautiful, 

 The thirsty soil at eve ; and when the sun 

 Relumed the gladden'd earth, opening anew 

 Their stores exuberant, prodigal as frail, 

 Whiten'd again the wilderness." 



1. Rock-rose (Helidnthemum). — Sepals 5, the two outer either smaller or 

 wanting ; petals 5 ; stamens numerous ; capsule 3-valved. Named from the 

 Greek helios, the sun, and anthos, a flower, because the flowers expand in 

 the sunshine. 



1. Rock-rose {Helidnihemum). 



1. Common Rock-rose {H. vulgdre). — Stem shrubby, prostrate ; leaves 

 with fringed stipules, opposite, oblong, green above, hoary beneath ; calyx of 

 five leaves, the two outer very small and fringed ; seeds black. Plant 

 perennial. Anyone used to roam over the chalky or gravelly soils of this 

 country must have often seen, early in spring and late in autumn, the pros- 

 trate branches of this Rock-rose, covered with their leaves. In spring these 

 are of a tender verdant tint ; but late in the year they are rigid, of a dark 

 myrtle-colour, and shine with the deepest green hue on the reddened leaf- 

 stems. When the sunshine of July pours down on the grassy slopes, and 

 tinges their sides with its gleams, the clumps of brilliant yellow flowers are 

 bright, as if the sun had turned them into gold. They are truly, as the 

 ancients called them, Beauties of the Sun, or, as some country people term 

 them, Sun-Roses ; never opening save when skies are bright, and never 

 lingering on till the late autumnal season. Their petals are crumpled and 

 fragile, and the little unblown buds are very pretty, standing by thousands 

 as they do among the grass on a cloudy day, waiting for the morrow's sun. 

 The stamens are very sensitive, and if only touched by the wing of an insect 

 or the point of a needle, they all lie down on the petals. It is long before 

 they resume their erect position, and in some cases they appear not to do 

 so at all. The bees seem very fond of these flowers, flying from one clump 

 to another, with their deep joyous humming, passing by their favourite wild 

 thyme, to rob the Cistus flower, which first invited them ; for these sagacious 

 insects keep throughout the morning to the same kind of blossom as that 

 from which they first gathered the honey, and never mingle the sweets of 

 the thyme and the Cistus. 



Many writers on the flowers of Scripture consider that a variety of this 

 Rock-rose is the plant alluded to in the Canticles, as the Rose of Sharon. It 

 does not appear that the Hebrew word, Chabazzcleth, which our translators 

 have rendered by "rose," is ever applied to that flower; and as the plains of 



