126 FAMILIAR WILD FLOWERS. 



The root-stock of the cross-wort is perennial, and the 

 flowering-stems that ascend each spring from it stand 

 boldly erect to a height of from six inches to over a foot, 

 a good deal depending upon the thickness of the surround- 

 ing vegetation amidst which the plant has to tight its 

 way upward to the air and light. The leaves are arranged 

 at somewhat distant intervals on the stems, in rings of four. 

 The leaves are ovate in shape, and, like the stems, thickly 

 covered with hairs. Each set of leaves is immediately over 

 the ring beneath it ; in most other plants the following ring 

 just alternates in direction, and fills in the interval, so that 

 the rings if looked down upon show eight leaves, four 

 above, and a second four coming below and filling up the 

 intermediate spaces; but in the cross-wort all the leaves 

 take the same direction, and if one leaf points due north, all 

 the corresponding leaves on all the rings would point due 

 north too. The numerous flowers are found in crowded 

 clusters in the axils of the leaves, ring after ring of leaves 

 on the stem having nestling within it these flower-clusters. 

 Almost all the flowers in each ring are stamen-bearing 

 only, and have a conspicuously four-cleft corolla ; the few 

 fertile flowers are often five-cleft. After flowering-time, 

 and when the blossoms have faded away, the little stems on 

 which they were severally borne bend downwards, and so 

 remain until the plant decays. 



The cross- wort is one of the numerous indigenous species 

 of bedstraw,but the markedly cruciform arrangement of both 

 foliage and petals has earned it its special distinctive name. 

 It is in some old herbals called the crusialis, and in medi- 

 eval French it was the croise. In Germany it has the same 

 name as its near relative the woodruff, a plant we else- 

 where figure and describe, but to distinguish it it has 



