FUMITORY 99 



symbol of sleep and death. The heads were once steeped in wine 

 and used to induce sleep. The petals are still employed to colour 

 medicines. Owing to the quantity of the seeds Cybele, mother of 

 the gods, is represented as crowned with poppy-heads. 



This poppy is cultivated as a garden flower, both single and double 

 varieties being known. 



The juice is employed to form a sedative medicine. It was used 

 in love divination, the leaf being prophetic. It was sacred to Venus. 

 St. Margaret's Day (July 20) was celebrated in connection with the 

 vanquished Dragon. 



Poppies a sanguine mantle spread 



For the blood of the Dragon that Margaret shed. 



ESSENTIAL SH-:CIFIC CHARACTERS: 



1 8. Papaver Rhccas, L. Stem hispid, bristles patent, many-flowered, 

 leaves sessile, pinnatifid, flower scarlet, large, black at the limb, capsule 

 globose, smooth, filaments subulate. 



!5 



Fumitory (Earth-smoke) (Fumaria officinaiis, L.) 



Seeds have been found with flax seeds and weeds of cultivation 

 in Neolithic deposits. Fumitory is confined to the \Yarm Temperate 

 Zone, and is found in Europe, N. Africa, W. Asia, and has been 

 introduced into the United States. It is absent from the following 

 counties in Great Britain, but common elsewhere, viz. : S. Lines, 

 Main Argyle, X. Ebudes; and it ascends up to 1000 ft. in the north 

 of England. It occurs in Ireland and the Channel Islands. By 

 Watson it was regarded as a colonist. 



The Earth -smoke is so constant an accompaniment of the growing 

 grain that a cornfield would hardly be complete without it, and the 

 widespread character of its distribution shows the length of its estab- 

 lishment, did not its occurrence in Neolithic deposits, with other weeds 

 of waste ground, testify to this. It grows in the furrows, or around 

 the borders, of wheatfields, associated with Corn Marigold, Corn Sow- 

 Thistle, S/icrantia, and the usual plants of arable land, which wander 

 afield to waste places around the straw-stack, farmyard, or mill. 



The connection between this plant and Climbing F"umitory is seen 

 in its spreading, not erect, habit, the principal stem which gives rise 

 to others being weak and trailing over the surface if very long The 

 joints are swollen to add strength on this account, as the plant is 

 tender and the stem is more or less wavy. 



