MARCH 35 



European plants, but the flowers, instead of being 

 reddish purple (hence Linnseus's name for them, 

 Erythronium, from cpvdpos, red), or sometimes white, 

 are all yellow, or yellowish white. The common 

 name, dog's-tooth violets, they get from the sharp 

 little roots, and it has been their name for a very 

 long time ; but the tooth form is not so clear in them 

 as in another beautiful spring flower, the toothwort, 

 or Dentaria, now classed with Cardamine. The plant is 

 closely allied to our cuckoo flower, or ladies' smocks ; 

 and we have one wild one (D. bulbifera), which is 

 rather pretty, but very inferior to the Continental forms, 

 D. digitata, and D. enneaphylla, yet an interesting 

 plant, from its habit of producing little bulbils in the 

 axils of the leaves, which fall off and soon form new 

 plants, just like the bulbils of some of the lilies, or 

 of the bulbiferous ferns. But the purple and white 

 species are really beautiful plants, very hardy and very 

 easily grown, and great ornaments in the spring garden; 

 yet sixty years ago Sweet expressed his astonishment 

 that it was not more common, and it is still very seldom 

 seen. The roots are very generally, though not always, 

 curiously like a set of teeth, hence the name ; 



'The root of it being white and smooth and shining, as 

 teeth ought to be, it was fitly named Dentaria, Dentillaria, 

 and Alabastrides, and as fitly Coralloides, the divers round 



