PEA AND BEAN TRIBE 197 



2. Purple Mountain Milk-vetch {A. hypogUttis). — Stem prostrate; 

 flower-stalks longer than the leaves ; leaflets oval, hairy ; stipules united ; 

 pods erect, stalked, hairy, and two-seeded. Plant perennial. This Milk- 

 vetch is very diff'erent in appeai'ance from the last, as its stems are slender, 

 and not more than two or three inches long. The heads of the flowers are 

 very large in proportion to the size of the plant. They occur in June and 

 Jul}^, and are of dark bluish-purple, or sometimes pale lilac, or white. The 

 plant, though somewhat local, is abundant on some dry gravelly and chalky 

 pastures, chiefly in the south of England. It grows plentifully on Royston 

 Heath, in Cambridgeshire. The French call the Milk-vetch UAstrarjale ; the 

 Germans, Tragant ; the Dutch, Kootruid ; and it is the Astragalo of the 

 Italian and Spaniard. 



3. Alpine Milk-vetch {A. alpimis). — Stem ascending; leaflets oval; 

 stipules egg-shaped, free ; legumes stalked, drooping, two or three-seeded, 

 and clothed with black hairs; whole plant downy. This, which like the 

 other species is perennial, is exceedingly rare. Its recorded places of growth 

 are the Glen of the Dole, Clova, and Little Craigindal, Braemar. It bears 

 clusters of few spreading or drooping flowers in July, which are white and 

 tipped with purple. This plant is by some writers called Phaca astragalina. 



13. Vetch, Tare (Ficia). 



* Flower-stalks lengthened, sometimes longer than the leaves ; calyx gibbous at 



the base. 



1. Wood Vetch {F. sylvdtica). — Flower-stalks many-flowered, longer than 

 the leaves ; leaflets in about eight pairs, elliptical, abrupt, with a sharp point ; 

 tendrils branched; stipules "crescent-shaped, deeply toothed at the base. 

 Plant perennial. Few of our wild flowers are more ornamental to our hedges 

 in summer than the Vetches which tangle among the bushes, holding them- 

 selves by leaning on their stronger neighbours ; and as Cowper says, repaying 

 "The strength they borrow with the grace they lend." 



Of all our wild Vetches this is the loveliest, its beautiful white flowers, 

 streaked with bluish veins, being very numerous and large. It is not, how- 

 ever, a common plant, growing chiefly in mountainous woods, or in biishy places 

 of mountainous districts in Scotland, the north and north-west of England, 

 Ireland, and Wales ; though it has been found in Kent, Oxfordshire, and 

 other counties away from mountains. Sir Walter Scott thus describes it — 



" Where profuse the Wood- vetch clings, 

 Round ash and elm in slender rings, 

 Its pale and azure pencill'd flower 

 Should canopy Titania's bower." 



It flowers in July and August, and its long stem climbs sometimes to the 

 height of six feet, its branching tendrils entwining themselves on the wood- 

 land boughs. 



Mr. Lees remarks, while objecting to the practice of scattering the seeds 

 of garden-flowers in wild places,— " Last week I passed through a wood 

 covering one of the transition limestone hills, near Ledbury, which was most 

 profusely ornamented by the beautiful Ficia sylvatica, festooning the trees 

 on all sides. I was delighted in the extreme at this wild production of 



