1861.] BOTANICAL NOTES FOR MALVERN. 275 



BOTANICAL NOTES FOR MALVEEN. 

 The Vernal Flora. 



" Let Mother Earth now decked with flowers be seen, 

 And sweet-breath' d zephyrs curl the meadows green." 



I have no intention so to load these " Botanical Notes " with 

 technical scientific definition or verbiage, as to render them un- 

 readable; for I rather design to glance at the face of Nature 

 pictorially, picking up a flower here and there, when it gives a 

 colouring to the scene, and thus inciting the wanderer to a study 

 of the beautiful and curious from the appearance it makes, seem- 

 ingly to invite attention. I once met a rustic working man in 

 one of my excursions in South Wales, who had got some not 

 very common plants in his hand, Avhich caused me to inquire if 

 he was a botanist. " Why, Sir,'^ Avas his reply, " I can't tell 

 the learned names that you botanists give to flowers ; but as I 

 go along the lanes, and look under the hedges, the opening blos- 

 soms seem to speak to me, and I can't help plucking them to 

 examine their loveliness, and hear what they have to say." 

 There nature spoke out, and the simple, unsophisticated Welsh- 

 man opened his heart to those influences that are supposed to be 

 most powerful when addressed to the cultivated mind, though 

 this is not invariably the case. But people in general would 

 study botany more, and like it better, if they paid attention to 

 the minute objects that make up the local colouring of a scene, 

 and tried to understand them in all their bearings. Even if they 

 got but little beyond artistic knowledge, this would be worth pos- 

 sessing, and they could go into botanical nomenclature if the charm 

 carried them on to do so. Yet, how few, comparatively, could ac- 

 count for the tints upon a rock standing forth out of the Malvern 

 Hills, and, from recollection, give it the proper hues, or know 

 what plants contributed to the local colouring the rock possessed ; 

 perhaps even a pre-E,aphaelite painter would be puzzled : but if he 

 knew anything of botany, what an insight into correct form and 

 changing colour, under different circumstances, would he possess ! 

 The rock that is black as charcoal in the midst of summer, with ' 

 the dry burnt-up skins of the Umbilicaria lichen, looks very dif- 

 ferent when all those innumerable crowded thalli are olive-green 

 under the influence of the vernal rain; and where the purple 



