74 FAMILIAR WILD FLO WEES. 



April being, perhaps, that in which it may be seen to most 

 advantage. The flowers, as the spring passes into summer, 

 often pale a good deal, and look generally poverty-stricken, 

 probably because the warmth of the lengthening days 

 withdraws from the plants some of that moisture that is 

 so essential to their well-being. The characteristic tubers 

 give the plant its specific name, Ficaria being derived 

 from ficus, a fig, in allusion to the fig-like form of those 

 members. The significance of the generic name we ex- 

 plain in our remarks on the bulbous crowfoot, another 

 member of the genus. The flower of the lesser celandine 

 forms a very pleasing star, and when seen in the number 

 in which they ordinarily may be met with they light up 

 very agreeably many a dull and sombre corner of the shrub- 

 bery or wood. The petals vary a good deal both in number 

 and size in number when comparing one flower with 

 another, and in size when comparing together the various 

 units that go to make up each corolla. From six to ten is 

 about the average number of petals, though they may be 

 found in even greater number. The surface of the petals 

 is peculiarly glossy. All the leaves grow on long leaf- 

 stalks, and are much simpler in outline than in most of the 

 buttercups, and they have a soft, mucilaginous character 

 that has tempted the bold experiment of using them as an 

 article of diet, either boiled, or in the raw state as a salad. 

 The calyx has only three sepals, a peculiarity that may be 

 noticed in the back view of one of the blossoms in our 

 illustration. The plant derives its name celandine from 

 the Greek word chelidon, a swallow, from an old belief that 

 the flower was supposed to appear on the arrival of the 

 swallows, and to die at their departure : the plant, however, 

 appears in 'blossom long before the swallows visit us, and it, 



