WALL-FLOWERS 53 



ivy-mantled tower " is regarded as a matter of course. 

 Sometimes, however, the shrub assumes such huge 

 proportions as to call for notice. At Portchester 

 Castle, for instance, it covers the northern face of 

 the Norman keep to the depth of some six or seven 

 feet, and this in spite of the fact that the stems in 

 places have been severed above the ground. One 

 wonders how the hard Norman masonry can provide 

 nourishment for so vast a mass of evergreen. It is 

 strange, however, how large species manage to exist 

 in barren places. An old print of the castle, dated 

 1 76 1, shows several trees growing on the summit of 

 the broken battlements, and elder-bushes of consider- 

 able size still flourish there. 



The late Lord Chancellor Selborne, who was a keen 

 observer of nature, once said that when he was a boy 

 at Winchester he well remembered some fine plants 

 of the red spur-valerian on the tower of the cathedral. 

 It is interesting to know that the plant still flourishes 

 there in considerable abundance. On the walls of the 

 close, which shut in the canons' gardens, some plants 

 of Erigeron acris will be seen, while the beautiful 

 little ivy-leaved toad-flax is everywhere. It is curious 

 that John Ray is silent as to the occurrence of this 

 plant in England, though he mentions it as abounding 

 on damp walls and rocks in Italy, and on the v^^alls of 

 Bale, in Switzerland. Gerarde, however, who gives a 

 very fair woodcut of the plant, says it " growes wilde 

 upon walls in Italy, but in gardens with us." But 

 Parkinson, a contemporary of Gerarde, states that 

 " it groweth naturall}' in divers places of our land, 

 although formerly it hath not beene knownc to bee 

 but in gardens as about Hatfield and other places that 

 are shadie upon the ground." Since then the plant 



