FLOWERS OF THE FIELD 77 



not only among the wheat and barley, but also on the 

 dry banks and grassy borders of the fields ; it has 

 invaded the bushy slopes above Pelham Woods, and 

 may be seen all along the upper edge of the cliff. 

 How the plant came to find a home in the island it 

 is now impossible to discover. It is not mentioned 

 as growing there by the early botanists, and its 

 presence could not possibly have been overlooked. 

 Its long leafy spikes of purple and yellow flowers, 

 with beautifully variegated tracts of a bright rose 

 colour, render it one of the most conspicuous plants 

 in the British Flora. Gerarde, who gives an illustra- 

 tion of it in his Herbal, speaks of the species as a 

 "stranger in England." John Ray, on the authority 

 of one Mr. F. Sherard, gives as its only locality, " In 

 the corn on the riglit hand just before you come to 

 Lycham, in Norfolk." The Flora Anglica, published 

 in 1798, quotes Ray's statement, and adds a few 

 additional localities. But the earliest record of it as 

 growing in the Isle of Wight occurs in a list of island 

 plants published in 1823. A few years later Dr. 

 Bromfield, who found it in vast abundance in its 

 present locality, carefully investigated its history. 

 Local tradition asserted that the plant was imported 

 with wheat-seed from " foreign parts " — some said 

 Spain, some Jersey, others, with more probability, 

 from Norfolk. He learnt that it was the custom at 

 harvest time to pull up the weed with the greatest 

 care, and carry it off the fields in bags, and to burn it, 

 picking up the very seeds from the ground wherever 

 they could be perceived lying. The bread, he was 

 told, made from the wheat on the farms above the 

 Underchff was not so dark coloured and "hot" as it 

 used to be, and that the "droll" plant was less plen- 



