64 FAMILIAR WILD FLOWERS. 



bright red, but sometimes white. The strawberry-leaved 

 potentil, Potentilla Fragariastrum, by the older botanists 

 called the sterile strawberry, closely resembles it : into the 

 botanical differences it would here be scarcely advisable to 

 go at any length, but the presence or absence of fruit is in 

 itself a very conspicuous point of difference, as the pseudo- 

 strawberry never produces the succulent and ruddy fruit 

 that is so conspicuous in the true plant. 



We remember to have seen the wild strawberry very 

 pleasingly introduced in a sixteenth-century MS. in the 

 British Museum, the white flowers and crimson fruit being 

 painted on a golden ground; it may be seen, too, very 

 gracefully rendered in the foreground of a picture of the 

 Virgin and Child, by Hugo Vandergoes. The Gothic 

 stone-carvers of Southwell, Wells, and elsewhere were not 

 oblivious of its charms, and we have seen it, too, in old 



