Numerous Early Comers 



say which attached themselves, but I know I was plan- 

 ning a fresh attack, both on the Willow and Mr. 

 Lynch's generosity, as after three years of waiting I 

 saw nothing of the Toothwort, and then it appeared 

 in several places, and since then has spread rapidly. 

 First it pushes the scale-clad stem out of the ground, 

 a strange-looking creamy-white mass, of seaweedy or 

 coral-like appearance or is my memory playing me 

 tricks ? Yes, I think it is, and you had better not 

 believe me, good reader, for now it dawns upon me 

 that I really mean neither a seaweed nor a coral, but 

 two products of the Mollusca that one finds washed 

 up at high tide level. The first is Flustra foliacea, some- 

 times called Scented Seaweed, but really the dry house of 

 a dead colony of one of those strange compound molluscan 

 animals called the Polyzoa, and the other is the empty 

 egg mass of the whelk, both when dry being of the 

 same creamy white as the Lathraea's scales. Yes, these 

 are what I am reminded of by the rosette of scales. 



It is a foolish plant to appear so early, for although 

 the white scales seem to be unhurt by severe frosts, 

 the purple buds which emerge from between them are 

 ruined by a very few degrees, and look brown and 

 sick after a cold night. In mild spells of weather I 

 have enjoyed the soft lilac mass of colour in late January 

 and February, but it is not until the Crocuses are over, 

 that is to say early April, that one gets the full effect 

 from it. It pushes up fresh flowers out of the rosettes 

 for some weeks longer, and as the grass grows and 

 shelters them the later flowers are larger and more 

 attractive than the earlier ones. 



113 H 



