74 SUMMER 



interest of the river flora is also due to the way in which the 

 network of a wide water-system provides an easy path for 

 the dissemination of seeds by birds and waterside animals, 

 and downstream by the current itself. Rivers are sowers of 

 most kinds of seed, but specially of those which they foster in 

 their own sedgy gardens ; and the plants which muster 

 thickly in such a paradise of watery life as the Norfolk 

 Broads or the upper Thames backwaters are distributed far 

 and wide among barer landscapes and beside austerer 

 shores. 



I. THE FLOWERS AND RUSHES 



The thick screens of water-plants which fringe the bank 

 of the Thames, and many other rivers in June, are chiefly 

 made up of flag and pond-sedge and bur-reed and scented 

 rush. There are scores of other plants gaily scattered 

 among them, but these four usually supply the real substance 

 to the thicket. The flag" or yellow iris is in high flower 

 before the middle of June, or even in May, in warm and 

 forward years in the south. Its heraldic blossom seems 

 emblematic of this regal time; oncoming midsummer lifts 

 her sceptre by the luxuriant stream. Each flower passes 

 quickly over, and though several open on a stalk in swift 

 succession, the flowering of the yellow flag is over only too 

 soon. The smooth flag-leaves give a glaucous sheen to the 

 thickets where they predominate ; from the day when they 

 first push out, lusty and flat, from the knotted roots in April, 

 they are bluer than most of the plants of the stream. The 

 pond-sedges for they vary in size and kind have a 

 narrower and greener leaf, rough, with a cutting edge ; it is 

 loud and rustling when the June storms toss by the water- 

 side. Its handsome grassy tops of sepia and buff are scarcer 

 in June than in late April and May, but still help to varie- 



