108 SUxMMER FLOWERS. 



less creeping, and rooting at the base, and then ascending, 

 from half a foot to a foot and a half in height, angular owing 

 to the prominent decurrent lines which pass down from 

 the margins of the leaves, and generally more or less pubes- 

 cent or hairy, but sometimes nearly smooth. The leaves are 

 oblong, bluntish, smooth, or with hairs appressed to the sur- 

 face, and borne alternately along the stems. The flowers 

 grow in incurved, one-sided, or, as they are technically termed, 

 scorpioid racemes, which are very frequently forked, and 

 gradually straighten as the flowers are developed, the lowest 

 flower opening first, and the rest in succession towards the 

 point. They consist of a small five-toothed or five-cleft calyx, 

 and a salver-shaped monopetalous regular corolla, of which 

 the tube is short as well as straight and narrow, and half- 

 closed at its mouth by five short scaly appendages, while the 

 limb is spreading and somewhat concave; inserted on the 

 corolla-tube are five short stamens, and enclosed within its 

 base is a deeply four-lobed ovary, having a simple style in- 

 serted between the lobes, which ultimately become hard shelly 

 seed-like fruits, called nuts, surrounded by the persistent calyx. 

 The flowers are of a pretty clear light or azure blue, with a 

 golden -yellow centre. 



It has been remarked of this plant, which constantly grows in 

 wet places, that affectionate remembrance will always moisten 

 tlie eye of sensibility, and hence no dry habitat can be allowed 

 to the Forget-me-not. Mr. Lees relates of a nearly allied 

 plant, the M. repens, which grows in swamps and quaking 

 bogs, that it was once forcibly impressed upon his recollection, 

 thus: perceiving it blooming in the midst of a bog, on the bleak 

 deceptive sides of Plinlimmon, he dashed after it, but received 

 only a cool reception from the beauty, though his knees bent 

 before her dripping shrine, and after all he retired with but a 



