SPUING FLOWERS. 41 



The leaves are the only part of the plant which can build 

 up fresh organized mutter ; and the matter composing 

 every flower has been sent to it by the leaves, either im- 

 mediately, as in most annuals, or through the storehouse 

 of a root, stem, or tuber, as in most perennials. A 

 hyacinth-bulb is a good^ and familiar instance of such a 

 storehouse. 



Here, for example, among the shady greenery of the 

 bank I can gather numberless flowering heads of the 

 perennial mercury a queer little three-cornered green 

 flower, with copious clusters of its tiny feathery blos- 

 soms hanging out upon long and graceful stalklets. 

 This mercury has a permanent creeping root-stock, in 

 which it lays by during the summer and autumn the 

 material needed for its next year's bloom ; and so it can 

 come out abundantly in the early spring before the shiny 

 green leaves are yet fully opened. On the other hand, 

 its very close ally, the annual mercury, grows afresh 

 from the seed every season, and therefore it has not 

 accumulated enough capital to begin flowering until the 

 late summer and autumn months. Yonder, again, on 

 the slope of the hill in the Fore Acre, I see a pale bunch 

 of primroses, their short stalks all tightly clinging to the 

 root-stock, in which the material for their growth has 

 been kept safely through the dangers of winter ; and if 

 you tear up the stock, you will see that it is large and 

 starchy, though it does not acutally form a tuber, as in 

 its near and more brilliant relative, the cyclamen. Fur- 

 ther on, the railway embankment is all yellow with the 

 tall gaunt-looking scapes and tufted flower-heads of the 

 coltsfoot, a yet more significant and interesting plant. 

 The coltsfoot is a sort of fluffy ragwort, which sends up 

 from its perennial starchy root a number of solitary, 

 stiff, straight, cottony stems at the first promise of 



