GENTIAN TRIBE 243 



corolla, deeply cleft ; annual. This plant is found on various sandy sea- 

 shores. Its leaves are all narrow and ribbed, and it varies in height from 

 two to six inches. Its rose-coloured flowers expand from June to August. 



Sir Joseph Hooker is of the opinion that we have only one British species, 

 — E. centaurium — of which the others are at most sub-species. 



4. Yellow-wokt (Chlura). 



Perfoliate Yellow-wort (C. perfolidfa). — ^Leaves connate, perfoliate, 

 egg-shaped, glaucous ; panicle forked, many-flowered ; calyx divided to its 

 base into long narrow segments ; aniuial. This pretty plant can scarcely be 

 called common ; though on chalky soils south of Durham and Westmore- 

 land, and in Ireland, we may often find it in abundance. On the cliffs 

 of Dover one might sec on any summer day a hundred plants during a 

 morning walk, the yellow flower reminding us, both in form and hue, 

 of some of the garden jessamines. But the Yellow-wort is an herbaceous, 

 and not a shrubby, plant ; and its pale sea-green stem, a foot or a foot 

 and a half high, runs through the leaves, and, like them, is thickly 

 covered with sea-green bloom. The flowers open only in sunshine, and have 

 a singular habit of expansion : for the central flower unfolds early in the 

 morning and closes at noon, and then the lateral flowers expand and remain 

 open till sunset. It is very bitter, and is often called on this accoiuit Yellow 

 Gentian, and doubtless its properties are somewhat similar to those of that 

 tonic bitter plant. The seeds, if pressed, are found to be full of a yellowish 

 thick juice. The Avhole plant will afford a good yellow dye. It was formerly 

 called Blackstonia, after a London surgeon named Blackstone. In the time 

 of John Ray, it was termed Centaureum luteum. Lister, in writing to Ray in 

 1669, says, "I add, by way of present, a couple of pastiles, or small cakes, 

 made of the jviices, dried in the sun, of our English store of plants ; they are 

 unmixed, and purely natural as they were taken from the plants by incision. 

 The one was, in the drawing or issuing out of the plants, a purple juice ; the 

 other a gold colour. The one burns freely with a flame, and is of no offensive 

 or ungrateful smell ; the other burns not at all with a flame, at least contimies 

 it not, and is intoxicating ; they are both bitter. Guess me the plants that 

 afford them. I have a score of different juices beside by me in cakes ; but 

 these are, if I mistake not (at least to the best of my knowledge), nowhere . 

 made mention of by any author, although the plants be common in England.'' 

 As our great naturalist replied, that he was "not so cunning as to tell" what 

 plants afforded these cakes, Mr. Lister informed him that they were our 

 Yellow-wort, and one of the Lettuce plants, Laduca sylvesfris. 



The Chlora blossoms from June to September. The French call it Clore ; 

 the Germans, Biberkraut. It is still sometimes termed Perfoliate Centaury. 



5. BucK-BEAN (Menydnthes). 



Buck-bean, or Marsh Trefoil {M. trifoUdta). — Leaves alternate, 

 stalked ; leaflets 3, equal, inversely egg-shaped, wavy ; flower-stalk supporting 

 a stalked cluster; perennial. A more lovely plant than this is not to be 

 found in our native Flora. It grows in marshy boggy grounds, and on the 

 margins of woodland tarns, which it sometimes covers with its matted stems 



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