GREEN FLOWERS 39 



ways are hidden from all but the close seeker, their 

 properties are^ held sinister, and often mysterious 

 are their manners of growth. Botanists take delight 

 in discoveries that need a botanist to appreciate 

 them ; but for us the outward shapes and super- 

 ficial strangenesses of the verdant flowers may suffice. 

 Thus, from the arum in his pale or speckled toga, 

 what a strange transition is it to the green floweret 

 of the butcher's -broom that I find presently in a 

 wood. Each minute blossom clings to the bosom 

 of the parent leaf, like a baby to its mother, and 

 thus the whole dark, prickly shrub is starred with 

 light in the sun, and brightened even under grey 

 March winds by its multitude of tiny children. Also 

 hiding under the forest, set in a scented jewel of rich 

 moss and ivy at some streamlet's edge, I found the 

 common variety of chrysosplenium or golden saxifrage. 

 Mellow and lemon-green are his small blossoms, and 

 they surmount a plant of delicate and beautiful frame. 

 Folks make a salad of him in the Vosges, and afore- 

 time the golden saxifrage, like the green hellebore, 

 was accounted a remedy for melancholy. To eat him 

 in this connection may be vain, but to seek and find 

 him within the glades of a Spring wood should 

 hearten you ; and if you chance upon his brother, 

 with alternate leaves, joyful you may be, because 

 you will have found one of the rarest flowers in 

 Devon. 



Not far from my Chrysosplenium another dainty 

 green dweller in the moist seclusion of the under- 



