i 4 THE PLANT -WORLD IN MARCH. 



century, has become familiar in the garden even of the 

 cottager, and is recognised as a currant even by children, 

 the Latin name common to the whole group still clings 

 more particularly to it, as does Trifolium to the crimson 

 clover. Close by, its humbler, but more useful kinsfolk, the 

 red currant and the gooseberry, droop their greenish 

 clusters from twigs whose opening buds breathe the first 

 scent of spring, now, however, eclipsed in fragrance by 

 the "leafless pink mezereons" beside them. We shall 

 indeed be fortunate if, when our early spring rambles take 

 us into some wood on a limestone soil, we light upon this 

 rarest of our native shrubs, humble in its growth, bare as 

 yet of leaves, but "thick beset with blushing wreaths" of 

 the sweetest pink tubular flowerets. If we try to gather 

 it without a knife the toughness of its flexible shoots will 

 remind us of its kinship to the lace -barks of the tropics, 

 which furnish stout bast for the rope-maker. 



If the owner love the old-fashioned favourites of our 

 fathers, the curious hen-and-chickens daisy may be here, 

 with early polyanthus and the grape- and cluster-hyacinths. 

 From beneath the main head of minute florets, the outer 

 ones strap-shaped and white or pink-tipped, the inner ones 

 tubular and yellow, which the botanist with his pocket lens 

 will show us constitutes a daisy, peep several little stalks, 

 each bearing a daisy in miniature, suggesting newly-hatched 

 nestlings just leaving the wing of the brooding hen. A 

 little searching in our woodlands in spring will reveal 

 primroses that are not only the pale yellow hue that 

 suggests to our poets nothing but thoughts of unloved 

 sorrow, but of almost every shade from purest white to 

 pink and even bright red. Many of these may also vary 

 in having a long common stalk to their flowers, like the 



