The Lunatic Asylum 



already described, have a place in one of these beds. The 

 viviparous form of Poa alpina still bears its crop of young 

 plants instead of flowers just as it did on the banks of the 

 roadside at Lanslebourg. Several Strawberries are suffi- 

 ciently crazy to come here. First and foremost the 

 Plymouth Strawberry, which is one of the strangest of 

 plants, and has a wonderfully curious history. It is 

 certainly wrong in the head if ever a plant was, for it is 

 just an ordinary wild Strawberry in every way until it 

 blossoms, then every portion of the flower is seen to have 

 been changed into leafy structures ; the petals are little green 

 leaves, even the anthers and carpels are replaced by tufts of 

 tubular leaves, but this does not prevent it from ripening 

 a kind of fruit which has a central portion of red flesh 

 studded with the tubular leaves instead of pips, and with 

 two ranks of leaflets round the base which are the sepals and 

 petals. In this state it is a pretty green and red object. 

 It is first mentioned by Parkinson in the Paradisus in 

 1629, and he gives a very rough but quite recognisable 

 figure of it. His description of it is so exact it is worth 

 quoting. He writes : " One Strawberry more I promised 

 to shew you, which although it be a wilde kinde, and of no 

 use for meate, yet I would not let this discourse passe 

 without giving you the knowledge of it. It is in leafe 

 much like unto the ordinary, but differeth in that the 

 flower, if it have any, is greene, or rather it beareth a 

 small head of greene leaves, many set thicke together like 

 unto a double ruffe, in the midst whereof standeth the fruit, 

 which when it is ripe, sheweth to be soft and somewhat 

 reddish, like unto a Strawberry, but with many small 

 harmlesse prickles on them, which may be eaten and 

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