210 CHAPTER XXV III. 



flower deserves the prize of beauty ; it is a case of 

 sheer favouritism. By the way, could anything be 

 more inappropriate, more ill-chosen, more objection- 

 able than the specific name of this amiable and delicate 

 little plant ? 



\Ve pass on to the Pea Flower Tribe. The 

 Riviera has four times as many species of Leguminous 

 plants as Great Britain possesses. Among the small 

 herbaceous flowers, surely the Coronilla varia is most, 

 if not the most, attractive. In the mountains it 

 abounds, but on the coast it is not common. Never- 

 theless, I find a few specimens every year in the out- 

 skirts of Nice. C. varia is so conspicuous that you 

 cannot easily pass it by. 



Among the woody Leguminosre, the choice is 

 difficult. The claimants are so numerous that one is 

 at a loss : the Wistaria, with its lilac festoons, the 

 Robinia with its mass of white, the great golden 

 Broom (Spartium), Cassia (Fig. 79), with its scarcely 

 bilateral flowers, and small rounded pods, common in 

 gardens. These and others can hardly be denied. But 

 my choice shall fall upon a small South American tree, 

 the Erythrina. An interesting species, though the 

 natives seem to despise it, I suppose because the 

 great red flowers are not produced in the middle of 

 the Winter season. Some of the gardeners' books do 

 not even mention the Erythrina. The flowers are 

 said to be ornithophilous (fertilized by birds), but 

 they must be more or less independent, for I have 

 found fruits now and then. The trunk is light and 

 spongy, the leaf not unlike that of a Laburnum, but 

 with armed petiole. Branches covered with flowers 

 are often sold in the market for a few sous. 



