In My Vicarage Garden 



good for food ; but he did observe some of the 

 native plants, enough at least to name them, for 

 we still have plant names which are genuine old 

 English, not Roman or Saxon. But if he did 

 observe them at all, he would still find them now, 

 for I believe there is not a single plant that has 

 been completely lost to the British Flora. We 

 hear, indeed, much complaining of the wholesale 

 extirpation of plants ruthlessly dug up for sale, 

 but though such extirpation is very grievous to 

 those who suffer from it, it is confined to a few 

 spots, and the plant as a British species is not 

 lost. The beautiful Cypripedium Calceolus can 

 only be found in very few spots, perhaps only in 

 one, but it never can have been abundant ; never 

 sufficiently abundant to make any perceptible 

 effect on the colour or vegetation of its native 

 habitats. It is a most difficult thing entirely to 

 extirpate a truly native plant anywhere ; it is 

 almost an impossibility. Nature is very bountiful, 

 and if at any time appearances point to de- 

 struction, she is reserving her powers to bring in 

 life again. The appearance and disappearance of 

 flowers is one of the mysteries of plant life. Every 

 collector knows that in some years he will find in 

 fair abundance a plant that he has long looked 

 for in vain ; he finds it one year, and then perhaps 

 it is many years before he sees it again. And I 

 feel sure that none of the wild plants which grew 

 in England in A.D. I oo have entirely disappeared ; 

 they have, of course, been expelled from some 



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