THE FIELD CONVOLVULUS. 3 



that look so beautiful in themselves, and are so valuable in 

 colour effect from the comparative dearth of blue flowers, 

 especially at the time of year when they are in blossom, 

 close almost directly they are gathered, and leave but an 

 unsightly gap as the token of their past occupation of the 

 spot they were intended to fill. 



The leaves of the field convolvulus are very variable in 

 form ; those represented in our drawing may be considered 

 as very fairly typical, but they are at times found with 

 the extremity of the leaf far more acute, and the lateral 

 lobes at the base much more elongated. The leaves are 

 given off singly from the stem, and from their axils, the 

 point at which their stems join the main stem, the flower- 

 stalks rise. These flowering stalks generally fork into two 

 smaller ones, each bearing a bud ; one of these lesser stems 

 is almost invariably smaller than the other, and bears a 

 bud in an earlier stage of development, so that though the 

 buds are found in pairs on the flower-stems, the flowers 

 are, as shown in our drawing, found singly. We do not 

 remember ever to have seen both the flower-buds of the 

 flowering stem equally ready to expand. At the point 

 where the flower-stem forks off, two very small scale-like 

 forms are found, and on one, and always one only, of the 

 little branchlets thus thrown off a second pair of these 

 small bracteal forms will be seen. In some plants these 

 flowering stems do not fork into two, but, nevertheless, 

 at about the same point as in the others that is to 

 say, at the point where one, judging by observation of 

 other specimens, would expect to see it divide off into 

 two the pair of small bracts is found. 



In one piece of this plant that we gathered, when 

 searching for material for our plate, the whole of the 



