174 COMPOSITE 



perennial. This flower, which is one of the earliest blossoms of spring, 

 is somewhat like the dandelion in form and colour, but much smaller, and 

 standing up alone on the soil, without the leaf to serve as contrast to its 

 bright gold. Bishop Mant has well described it : — 



' ' O'er scaly stem, with cottony down 

 O'erlaid, its lemon-colour'd crown 

 Which droop'd unclosed, but now erect, 

 The Coltsfoot briglit develops, deck'd, 

 Ere yet the impurpled stalk displays 

 Its dark-green leaves, with countless rays 

 Round countless tubes alike in dye 

 Expanded : but, howc'er the eye 

 Its tint may prize, no fragrant smells 

 It nourishes in nectar'd cells." 



The flowers of the Coltsfoot expand on moist, clayey, and limestone soils, 

 too abundantly, in March and April, and during the latter month the large 

 angular-edged leaves of pale green, Avith white under surfaces, are just un- 

 folding to view, and lie in masses in the later seasons by field or on road-side. 

 The Coltsfoot is the first plant which vegetates on marl or limestone rubble ; 

 and the banks by many of our railway cuttings are often covered with the 

 flowers long before other plants have found time to flourish there. The 

 clayey soil of the pestilential Maremmas of Tuscany, where scarcely any 

 other herb is to be seen, is sometimes decked for a vast extent with this. It 

 is a most noxious weed on some of our native soils, for every part of the 

 rootstock will produce a plant. Even if a small piece remain buried three or 

 four feet deep, it will soon vegetate, send up a stem to the surface, and spread 

 with singular rapidity. It ought never, on valuable land, to be allowed to 

 produce flowers or expand leaves ; and the best mode of extirpating it is to 

 cut off the crown of the plant in March. 



The flowering stem of the Coltsfoot is about five or six inches high, rising 

 directly from the root, and the scale-like bracts with which it is clothed are 

 often of a purplish hue, as are the drooping unexpanded flower-buds. The 

 plant has its name from inssis, a cough ; and we trace this origin in several 

 of its continental names. Thus, the Italians call it Tossalaggine ; the French, 

 Tussilage ; the Spaniards, the Tusilago. The Germans term it Huflattich, and 

 the Dutch, Hoefblad. The plant has, for many centuries, been used medicin- 

 ally in pulmonary disease ; it is bitter and demulcent, and a decoction is 

 still often used to sooth irritation in the air passages ; while until within the 

 last few years. Coltsfoot lozenges were commonly sold for coughs. The 

 plant has also, even from the days of Dioscorides, been smoked through a 

 reed, to relieve pain ; and the leaves are said to form the basis of the British 

 herb-tobacco. The cottony down has been sometimes used for filling cushions 

 and pillows, and, saturated with saltpetre, formerly served as tinder. The 

 Coltsfoot, though still retaining a place in the Materia Medica, is now little 

 used. 



36. Flea-bane (Erigeron). 



1. Canada Flea-bane {E. canadensis). — Stem much branched, hairy, 

 many-flowered ; leaves narrow, lanceolate, fringed with hairs ; ray of flower 

 shorter than the involucre; annual. This is not a common plant, though 



