282 FREAKS OF PLANT LIFE. 



as if newly taken from the ground. Old Gerard 

 calls it the " heath rose of Jericho," * but he says 

 that " the coiner spoiled the name in the mint, for of 

 all plants that have bin written of, there is not any 

 more unlike unto the rose." He gives a description 

 similar to that recorded above, with figures of the 

 plant in the dried and also in the expanded state. 



Akin in its movements to the HierocJnintina is the 

 "wind witch" of the Russian steppes, so graphically 

 described by Schleiden : " In autumn the stem of the 

 thistle plant rots off and the globe of branches dries 

 up into a ball, light as a feather, which is then driven 

 through the air by the autumnal Avinds, over the 

 steppe. Numbers of such balls often fly at once 

 over the plain with such rapidity that no horseman 

 can catch them, now hopping with short, quick 

 springs along the ground, onward in a spirit-like 

 dance over the turf, now caught by an eddy, rising 

 suddenly a hundred feet into the air. Often one 

 " wind witch " hooks on to another, twenty more join 

 company, and the whole gigantic, yet airy mass rolls 

 away before the piping east wind."^ 



The designation " rose of Jericho " has been 

 applied to the capsular fruiis of a species of fig 

 marygold, from the Cape of Good Hope {Mesembry- 



1 Gerard, " Herbal," lib. 3, p. 1,386. 

 => Schleiden, "The Plant," p. 354, 



