26 FAMILIAR WILD FLOWERS. 



hundreds of fruits of the brightest and rosiest pink colour, 

 and of the quaintest form, and the once verdant foliage 

 glows with exceptional brilliancy even amongst the rich 

 autumnal tints that surround it in the hedgerow. Even 

 when the chill winds and biting frosts of November and 

 December have swept all trace of foliage from the branches, 

 the ruddy and waxen berries yet remain to give unwonted 

 life and beauty to the dreariest scene. As the seeds ripen, 

 the various capsules open down their centres and expose to 

 view the large and brilliant orange-coloured seeds lying 

 within them. 



The spindle-tree is scarcely a tree at all, but rather 

 a hedgerow shrub, that attains to a height of some five 

 to twelve feet. The leaves are broadly lance-headed in 

 shape, smooth to the touch, and having their outlines 

 minutely toothed, like a fine saw. The slender flower- 

 stems bear at their summits some three to six flowers 

 in a cluster. These flowers are a pale yellowish-green 

 in colour. The fruit is four-lobed, and in each lobe is a 

 single large seed. Occasionally a variety of the spindle- 

 tree is found in which the fruit is pure white, affording 

 a very rich and curious contrast with the bright orange 

 seeds seen within on the opening of the valves. Beau- 

 tiful as these fruits are to the eye, they are possessed of a 

 very actively poisonous nature, a property not obscurely 

 hinted at in its ancient name, Euonymus, a name handed 

 down to us by the old Greek writer Theophrastus, and 

 which modern botanical science has retained. The name is 

 derived from Euonyme, the mother of the Furies in classic 

 mythology. 



The hard wood of this tree is commonly used for 

 making butchers' skewers ; and its familiar name, spindle- 



