170 COMPOSITE 



found not only in the Channel Islands, but, though rarely, in Norfolk, 

 Suffolk, Sussex, and Cambridgeshire. It has in July and August yellowish 

 and conspicuous flowers, tinged with red. The stem is from three to twelve 

 inches high, prostrate below, and woolly. 



2. Highland Cudweed {G. sylvdticum). — Stem simple, neai-ly erect, 

 downy ; heads axillary, in a leafy spike ; leaves narrow, lanceolate, and 

 downy ; perennial. In the usual form of this sjDCcies the leaves are 

 nearly smooth above, and the spikes are interrupted ; in the sub-species, 

 G. norvegicwn, the leaves are lanceolate and woolly on both sides. The latter 

 form is rare, and is found chiefly on Scottish mountains ; the former is a very 

 common plant in Scottish groves and thickets, as w^ell as in England and 

 Ireland, and, notwithstanding its specific distinction, is not confined to the 

 Highlands. It has spikes of yellow flowers from July to September, the 

 little blossoms being almost hidden by the cottony leaves growing among 

 them. Its height is from three inches to a foot or a foot and a half, and the 

 scales of the involucre are oblong, with a broad brown border. The name 

 of Gnaphalium, by which Dioscorides described a plant with soft white leaves 

 that served the purpose of cotton, and which may possibly have been identical 

 with some plant of this genus, is, like the old English names of Dwarf-cotton 

 and Cotton-weed, by no means inappropriate. The French term the Cud- 

 weed Gnaphale ; the Germans, Buhrpflanze ; the Dutch, Drooghloeme ; the 

 Italians and Spaniards, Gnafalio. The Cudweeds, as well as the plants of 

 the genus Antennaria, are included in the name of Everlasting, because of 

 the durable nature of the chaffy scales of their flowers. Pliny says that the 

 Cudweed was called Chamcezelon, signifying low-ground cotton ; and that it 

 was sometimes named Albinum, from the whiteness of its leaves and stalks. 

 The cotton picked from the foliage was used by the ancients instead of wool, 

 for filling couches and mattresses. The plant sometimes grown in our green- 

 houses, and called Gnaphalium, orUntale, is a native of Africa. Our gardeners 

 term it Everlasting Love, and it is Lafleur immorteUe of the French. None 

 who have ever visited Pere la Chaise can have failed to observe the wreaths 

 sold at the entrance of the cemetery for visitors to place on the tombs of 

 those whom they have loved and honoured in life, or Avhose names are dear 

 because associated with history, poetry, or science. Not a tomb of any note 

 is there unadorned ; and some whose names were unknown beyond the little 

 circle of love which their virtues had drawn around them, still live in loving 

 memories, and have the yellow wreaths lying in numbers on the spot where 

 their remains are entombed. Many graves are almost covered with the 

 garlands of Immortelles ; and while the fadeless flower may serve as an 

 emblem of love which is not to fade, so, too, the flowers planted on the sod 

 of the " early lost and long deplored " may remind the thoughtful of the 

 perishing nature of youth and beauty, while their renewed bloom may suggest 

 the idea of the resurrection of those loved remains. Such emblems are 

 needed in the cemetery of Pere la Chaise ; for while the monuments are 

 inscribed with touching laments for the departed, there are few words traced 

 there which point hopefully to the hour of meeting in heaven, which make 

 even the faintest allusion to the rising again of the perishing body. It is 

 thought by many writers that some species of Gnaphalium were used by the 



