86 FAMILIAR WILD FLOWERS, 



The stem is weak, often somewhat straggling, and a foot 

 or so in length, both stems and leaves being a good deal 

 clothed with soft hairs. The calyx is acutely five-cleft, and 

 shorter than the pedicel bearing it. The flowers, when we 

 compare them with those of the forget-me-not, are small and 

 insignificant-looking, though they are of too bright and 

 pure a blue to altogether escape our notice. The corolla is 

 widely displayed and all in one piece, but cut up into five 

 broad, rounded lobes. The flowers are borne on long leafless 

 racemes. These flowering stems often fork off into pairs, and 

 at their terminations roll round like the tail of a scorpion, 

 a peculiarity that we may see in the comfrey and some few 

 other flowers, and which has procured for our plant its most 

 common popular name. It is sometimes also called the 

 field forget-me-not. 



The name Myosotis signifies mouse-ear, a name be- 

 stowed on the genus from the shape and hairiness of 

 the leaves, and originally applied by the old Greek 

 writer Dioscorides. The slight resemblance of the 

 curled-up buds to the tail of a scorpion was naturally 

 held as an indication that the plant possessed potent powers 

 against the evil powers of the scorpion and against snakes 

 and other such like venomous creatures. We have already 

 referred to the extraordinary dread that scorpions seem 

 to have inspired in mediaeval times, though England can 

 never have had any practical experience of them in the 

 living state, or even when dead. Possibly the fear of them 

 was a tradition handed down from the days of the Crusades. 

 Gerarde we see gives six herbal remedies against the sting- 

 ing of bees and wasps, and one against the stinging of 

 nettles, while against the far more remote danger of the 

 sting of the scorpion, his readers are fore-armed with 



