,8 FLOWERS OF THE HILLS AND DRY PLACES 



of the sudden bursting of the capsule if it is touched when ripe. 

 Noli-me-tangere, Columna, Latin for touch-me-not, means the same 



his handsome and curious plant is called Balsam, Quick-in-hand, 

 Touch-me-not. Coles, in his Art of Simples, says: "A plant called 

 Noli-me-tangere, near which if you put your hand the seed will spurtle 

 forth suddenly, in so much that the unexpectednesse of it made the 

 Valient Lord Fairfax to start, as Mister Robert (Isobart) at the 

 Physick garden in Oxford can tell you ". At night the leaves hang 

 pendent, & unlike most other plants, whose leaves droop during the 



day, if at all. 



ESSENTIAL SPECIFIC CHARACTERS: 



71. Impatient noli-me-tangere, L. Stem branched, slender, leafy, 

 leaves ovate, serrate, peduncles many-flowered, flowers yellow with 

 orange spots, spur recurved, valves of capsule curling when touched. 



Rest Harrow (Ononis spinosa, L.) 



Like most leguminous plants included in this work this is not 

 represented amongst the Early Glacial floras. It is a plant of the 

 North Temperate Zone found in Europe, West Asia, North Africa. 

 In Great Britain it is absent from the counties of Worcester, Brecon, 

 Radnor, Carmarthen, Cardigan, Montgomery, Carnarvon, Anglesea, 

 Renfrew, Lanark, and elsewhere, and in Scotland it only occurs in 

 Berwick, Haddington, Edinburgh, Fife, Stirling, Forfar, and Dum- 

 barton, growing on sandy shores and dry pastures. 



Rest Harrow is an upland plant which is fond of rough, scrubby 

 pasture, usually indicating rather bare unproductive ground. For this 

 reason it is, like Gorse in some parts, burned and rooted up in order to 

 get rid of it. Hillsides of medium elevation are the usual station for 

 this plant, though it may be found on sandy shores also at a lower 

 level. 



It is a shrubby plant, with erect or prostrate then ascending hairy 

 stems, with stolons or trailing shoots, with numerous branches, downy, 

 and bearing long spines, smooth or gummy. The leaves are in 

 threes below, 1 above lance-shaped, coarsely toothed. The hairs may 

 be scattered or lie in two opposite rows. 



The solitary rose-coloured and white flowers are borne in the 

 axils or in pairs, either stalkless or shortly stalked. The standard is 

 streaked with red. The corolla exceeds the calyx, the keel and wings 



1 Or the lateral leaflets may be absent. 



