DISCS OF BLOSSOM 125 



the disc contracts into a cup, wherein we often see sitting a 

 spider. Wild parsnip is a scarcer native of similar ground, and 

 has an equally tough and meagre root-stock in the wild state. 

 The other discs of blossom, formed of cymes and 

 corymbs, belong to widely different groups of plants from the 

 umbellifers, as their whole growth and structure indicate. In 

 autumn they provide the birds with some of their richest 

 berries ; and most of them, though not the guelders and 

 elders, belong to the same tribe as the apple and pear. They 

 are almost as ubiquitous in English scenery as they are con- 

 spicuous. Where the last solitary tree clings to some high 

 moorland dingle, it is usually a dwarfed and woody moun- 

 tain-ash, which spreads its mealy corymbs above the crow's 

 nest wedged in its crown. Chalk downs are the favourite 

 home of the whitebeam, which has blossoms of a pearlier 

 whiteness, faintly scented like primroses in the soft May 

 weather. The tighter clusters of the guelder-rose open, stiffly 

 erect, by the white tracks in the same chalky landscapes ; it 

 is not until they bear the load of the autumn berries that the 

 stems bend to the whitebeam's graceful curve. The water- 

 guelder shows a conflict of taste for the dry chalk soil and for 

 wet streamside hedges ; it is happiest where trenching in the 

 water-meadows turns up a white edge of chalk along the 

 stream, and its tastes for once can be combined. Its dull 

 white discs stretch on straggling boughs over the deep grass 

 where the corncrakes chide in the June evenings. The 

 discs of the water-guelder are formed of large barren flowers 

 on the circumference, almost concealing the small inner 

 blossoms which produce the berries. Like the blossoms of 

 the garden hydrangea, these flowers are blind ; they have 

 only rudimentary organs in the centre of the corolla ; and the 

 stamens and pistils of a flower have so much the appearance 

 of its living eye that the water-guelder looks best at a dis- 

 tance or in the dusk. It is precisely to serve as a distant or 



