134 FAMILIAR WILD FLOWERS. 



easily eradicated. In the river at the bottom of our 

 own garden we have in some years had large quan- 

 tities of the plant in vigorous growth, some of the 

 masses being many square yards in area; and when 

 this and the water buttercups, and other aquatic plants, 

 blocked the river up too completely, we always found 

 that while many of the things could only be kept down by 

 a free use of the scythe, the water-cress, with a comparatively 

 slight pull, could be entirely dislodged, and sent floating 

 down stream. The floating portions presently lodge on a 

 shallow part of the bed of the river, or get drifted into a 

 quiet back-water, and there speedily re-root themselves. 

 When the plant is in flower its multitudinous blossoms 

 give quite a white mantling to the stream, and at a little 

 distance, as one looks up or down stream, look almost as 

 though not flowers, but flour had been freely sprinkled ! 

 The stems are from a few inches to some four feet long, 

 and have numerous rootlets springing from their lower 

 portions. The leaves vary in form according to their 

 position on the stem ; those of the flowering-shoots are 

 shown in our sketch, but those with which we are more 

 familiar as an article of diet are much larger, often 

 bronzed or purpled, and having the terminal leaflet much 

 larger than the others. The corolla is of the cruciform 

 type, so characteristic of the great natural order to which 

 the plant belongs. The pod is an inch or so in length. 

 The foolVcress, water-parsnip, or Sium nodiforvm, is 

 often found growing with the water-cress, and as the latter 

 is thoroughly wholesome, while the former is deleterious, 

 some little care should be exercised, though there is no real 

 difficulty in discriminating them. The foolVcress belongs 

 to the umbel-bearing plants ; all its flowers, therefore, are 



