100 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE 



of foreign plants have established their claim to be 

 admitted within the charmed circle of British plants. 

 The last edition of The Londoji Catalogue reckons 

 no less than 1958 species as now growing wild in 

 Great Britain, but this large estimate includes a great 

 number of brambles, wild-roses, willows, and hawk- 

 weeds, which can only be distinguished by scientific 

 botanists. Moreover, it comprehends those alien 

 species which have become completely naturalised in 

 these islands, and have settled down permanently side 

 by side with the older flora. It is often difficult — 

 sometimes it is impossible — to absolutely decide 

 whether a given plant be really indigenous or other- 

 wise, so thoroughly have some of these introductions 

 become at home in their new surroundings. Just as 

 it is true of England as a nation that Saxon and 

 Norman and Dane are we, so is it equally true of our 

 flora that it comprises plants of many different types 

 and from many foreign lands. 



Some of these introductions date back to a very 

 early period in our history. Several are to be as- 

 signed to the time of the Roman occupation, as for 

 instance the Roman nettle, still to be found about 

 towns and villages in the east of England, and pro- 

 bably the saffron crocus, formerly cultivated at Saffron 

 Walden, and occasionally to be met with in a semi- 

 wild state. To a still earlier period, the woad, or 

 Isatis tinctoria, probably belongs — the plant of which 

 Pliny tells us, in the quaint translation of Philemon 

 Holland, that "with the juyce whereof the women of 

 Britain, as wel the married wives as yong maidens 

 their daughters, anoint and dy their bodies all over, 

 resembling by that tincture the color of Moores and 

 Ethyopians ; in which manner they use at some 



