THE CANADIAN HORTICULTURIST. 



151 



two to make a drinking place for the 

 cattle, and when the soil is washed 

 away you will be able to see the actual 

 mouths by which it fastens itself to the 

 rootlets of its host. Rattle dwarfs 

 the gi-asses terribly and makes a hard, 

 dry stringy fodder itself into the bar- 

 gain. The rattles are a whole group of 

 half-developed parasites well on the way 

 to the worst state of degradation, 

 though not yet so utterly degenerate as 

 the leafless toothworts or the scaley 

 broomropes. They can still grow 

 feebly, if left to themselves, for when 

 you sow the seeds alone in a flower-pot, 

 by way of experiment, the young seed- 

 lings will rise to an inch or two, put 

 forth a few scrubby leaves and blossom 

 poorly with a couple of straggling 

 flowers or so. But when you let them 

 have some nice vigorous grass plants 

 in the same pot, they fix upon them im- 

 mediately and grow to a foot in height, 

 with a comparatively tine spike of pale 

 primrose flowers which children some- 

 times know as cockscombs. Eyebright 

 has just the same trick, and so have the 

 two red-rattles, cow-wheid, and others 

 of their kind. There are some parasites, 

 like mistletoe, whose parasitism has 

 become so deeply ingrained that their 

 seeds will not even sprout except on 

 the body of a proper host, and those 

 have adapted themselves to their pecu- 

 liar habits by acquiring very sticky 

 berries which fall on a bough and are 

 gummed there by their own bird-lime. 

 Even such an hardened offender as the 

 mistletoe, however, has partially green 

 leaves which assimilate food on their 

 own account. 



SCARLET GERANIUMS, ASPARAGUS, &C. 



Among all our old-fashioned garden 

 flowers not one is brighter or prettier 

 than those common pelargoniums from 

 the Cape, which v^e all know as scarlet 

 geraniums. They are not exactly of the 

 genuine botanical geranium type, it is 



true, but they are quite near enough to 

 it for even unlearned eyes to perceive 

 immediately the close relationship be- 

 tween them. I suppose every body 

 knows the little wild herb-robert of 

 our English roadsides, its petty lace- 

 like foliage turns so bi-ight a red on dry 

 walls or sandy hedge-banks that even 

 the most casual passer-by can hardly 

 fail to have learned its name. Herbro- 

 bert is the true geranium, and it has 

 many familiar allies in Britain and in 

 the rest of Europe, including that large 

 and brilliant kind, the blood geranium, 

 which studs the limestone rocks of the 

 Mediterranean and the Atlantic shores 

 from Sorrento and Cadiz to our own 

 Cornish, Welsh and Cambrian cliffs. 



Most English lilies flower in spring 

 or very early summer, but asparagus 

 is an exception to the general rule. 

 Asparagus is a wild plant of the British 

 south coast by origin, and though it is 

 now becoming rather rare on our own 

 shores, I have still picked a few sprigs 

 of late grass on the rocky islets at 

 Kvname Cove in Cornwall, and at some 

 other isolated places along the English 

 seaboard from Devonshire to Wales. 

 Its life history is a curious and inter- 

 esting one, for it forms a rare example 

 in our own country of a green, leafless 

 plant, with branches closely simulating 

 foliage both in appearance and func- 

 tion. The primitive wild asparagus is 

 a wiry herb with matted perennial 

 root-stock, in which it stores up food- 

 stuffs during each summer for the sup- 

 ply of its succulent green shoots in the 

 succeeding spring. Under tillage we 

 have made it increase from its present 

 primitive stature of two feet or less to 

 an average height of four or five, and 

 at the same time its spring shoots, 

 which are slender and rather stringy in 

 its native sands. Many Alpine plants 

 still linger in isolated spots of Britain. 

 For example, the beautiful lady's slip- 

 per, by far the most striking of all the 



