58 FAMILIAR WILD FLOWERS. 



sketch was taken. When found at all, the plant is ordinarily 

 met with in abundance. It should be sought for in flower 

 during- June, July, and August. It is a hardy perennial, 

 so that when it is once established in a district there is no 

 difficulty in finding it year after year. The stalk is six 

 feet or more in length, climbing and branching freely, 

 smooth to the touch, and having its angles expanded into 

 lateral wings, that ran along it on either side. The leaf- 

 stalks, too, are flattened and winged in the same way, and 

 terminate in a three-branched tendril; each leaf-stalk 

 bears a single pair of long and sharply-pointed leaflets, and 

 at its base are two small and narrow stipules. The large 

 size of the leaf unfortunately prevented our showing this 

 latter feature on our plate. The flower-bearing stems are 

 some six inches long, wingless, springing from the axils of 

 the leaves, and each bearing numerous flowers. The flowers 

 themselves are large and attractive-looking, rosy-red in 

 colour, conspicuously veined, and of the papilionaceous form 

 one is so familiar with in the furze, broom, clover, meadow 

 vetchling, and other equally common examples of the great 

 natural order to which they and this belong. The seed-vessel 

 is a pod of some two or three inches long, at first green, 

 but afterwards changing to a bright, but pale brown. Each 

 pod contains some ten or twelve globular and blackish seeds. 

 That the present species should be the narrow-leaved ever- 

 lasting pea will naturally suggest to our minds that there 

 is possibly a broad-leaved species as well, and for this we 

 have not far to seek, though we must look for it in the 

 garden, and not in the hedgerow or copse. The broad-leaved 

 everlasting pea is one of the commonest, most old-fashioned, 

 and most beautiful adornments of an old-fashioned garden. 

 Some few writers consider it as but a variety of the plant 



