202 



The term native may sometimes require to be qualified, but not 

 with regard to British plants, which all come under the same cate- 

 gory. 



2. Naturalized species are those which have been introduced 

 purposely or accidentally by man, and finding conditions suitable for 

 them, have continued to exist without artificial aid, and often in de- 

 fiance of attempts at their extirpation. Some of these are medicinal 

 plants, held in esteem long ago by monk and simpler, now only by 

 the herbalist, such as the hellebore and birthwort, monks'hood and 

 master-wort, belladonna, opium-poppy, and perhaps Carduus " bene- 

 dictus ! " 



Of these the hellebores and belladonna have spread themselves over 

 particular limestone districts, such as the Downs, the Chiltrens, and 

 the Cottes Wolds, and so identified their distribution with undoubted 

 natives, that I for one do not believe in their alleged modern and arti- 

 ficial introduction. Others are pot-herbs and garden flowers, found 

 near the ruins of mountains, or where cottage-gardens have been; or 

 they may have been introduced in field-crops, and have established 

 themselves by waysides and in waste places. The list of these is nu- 

 merous. I will only mention lucerne and flax and gold-of-pleasure, 

 the winter aconite and paeony, various anemones, pinks, and honey- 

 suckles, larkspur and candy-tuft, horse-radish and salsafie, saffron, 

 coriander and carraway, balm and borage. 



3. Imperfectly naturalized. — Since the time of Ray many plants 

 have been added to the British Flora, and every year adds to the list 

 species which require, next year, to be struck off. Foreign vessels 

 leave ballast-heaps on our coasts, upon which spring up a harvest of 

 plants unknown before, and which are seldom found until farmers 

 buy foreign flax and clover-seed, and then come the new dodder and 

 Orobanches, grasses, and composite plants, many of which, fortunate- 

 ly, do not ripen their seed in England before they are removed with 

 the crop, and hence they have not become " naturalized."* It is pro- 

 bable that many plants which are notoriously on the increase, like the 

 nettle, Chenopodia, and Chelidonium majus, require more nitrogenized 

 matter than exists in untilled soil ; and this is why so few of the field 

 and garden crops become permanently naturalized. Buckwheat, 

 maize, hemp, and Solanum tuberosum, would be a grand addition to 

 the British Flora, quite on a par with the Eschscholtzia, Impatiens, 



* The solitary service-tree in Bewdley Forest has now quite lost the chauce it had 

 for several centuries of multiplying itself and becoming " permanently naturalized.'' 



