50 FAMILIAR WILD FLOWERS. 



a poor soil causes it to disappear and pass into the second 

 form, and there is little reason to doubt that the fuller's 

 teasel should be considered merely as a variety of our 

 present plant. The small teasel is a distinct species; it 

 may at times be found in moist hedgerows, but is not 

 generally distributed; its height, the shape of its flower- 

 heads, the form of the foliage, are all quite distinct from 

 the present plant. 



The common teasel should be searched for on waste 

 laud, in the hedgerows, and by the roadside. It flowers 

 rather late in the summer, and while commonly dis- 

 tributed in the south of England, becomes rarer as we 

 go northward. The plant is a biennial, and attains to a 

 height of some four or five feet, though we may sometimes 

 find specimens only eighteen inches or so in height, bearing 

 the crop of cylindrical flower-heads. The whole plant is 

 very harsh and prickly to the touch. The lower leaves are 

 large, and lance-headed in shape, and coarsely toothed ; the 

 upper leaves are more pointed in character, grow in pairs, 

 and have their bases so grown together as to form a deep 

 cup, capable of holding dew and rain. This conspicuous 

 feature has earned the plant its older and alternative name 

 of Venus's basin, and it was held that the water which collects 

 in this natural receptacle and may almost always be found 

 there was a remedy for warts. Its generic name, Dipwcus, 

 also refers to this peculiarity of structure, being derived 

 from the Greek verb signifying to be thirsty. 



Lyte, in his translation of Dodoens (1586), calls our plant 

 the card thistle. " The card thistle his first leaues be long 

 and large, hackt round about with notches like the teeth of 

 a sawe, betwixt these leaues riseth a holow stalke of three 

 foote long or more, with many branches, set here and 



