20 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND 



wings, makes, with uncertain aim, begotten of 

 lessened use and vitality, for the yellow spot. 



The lesser celandine is also yellow when it is 

 young and fresh, though it soon bleaches into 

 white. Its star-like appearance is borrowed from 

 the many -pointed rays eight, or nine. This 

 feature marks it out among the flowers, were 

 there any so soon besides the colt's - foot to 

 confuse it with gives it, so to speak, a certain 

 individuality. 



By the high roads, which, happily at the time, 

 are not quite so dusty as they afterward become, 

 it grows in a stunted form, and wears an away- 

 from-home look. 



It belongs to the burn-sides, where it brightens 

 the broken passage of the angler from current to 

 current and from pool to pool. Its associations 

 are with running water and early trouting. Only 

 those who have seen the dark green leaves against 

 the reddish brown bank, and the yellow star 

 against the dark green leaves, or both leaf and 

 star standing out against the neutral-tinted stream, 

 can tell all the celandine is. Only those, too, who 

 know it as one of many pleasant impressions. 



Nor is it the only flower which one has learned 

 to like, less for itself than because of scene and 



