Spring Wild-flowers. 17 



ones the female. On the hedge-banks below these trees 

 may be gathered the dogs' mercury, an herbaceous plant 

 of distinct sexes, readily recognised by its dark green, 

 oval, pointed leaves. Soon after the appearance of these, 

 the banks and open sunny spots become decked with the 

 glossy yellow blossoms of the celandine, a flower resem- 

 bling a buttercup, but with eight or nine long and narrow 

 petals, instead of five rounded ones. Mingled with it 

 here and there is the musk-root, a singular but unpre- 

 tending little plant, green in every part, and with its 

 blossoms collected into a cube-shaped cluster, a flower 

 turned to each of the four points of the compass, and one 

 looking right up to the zenith. The roots, as implied in 

 the name, have the odour of musk. On the moister 

 banks, such as those at the lower edge of the wood, 

 grows also the golden-saxifrage, a pretty little plant, with 

 flat tufts of minute yellowish bloom. Yellow, in different 

 shades, prevails to a remarkable extent among English 

 wild-flowers, and especially those of spring. The rich 

 living yellow of the coltsfoot is a conspicuous example. 

 The coltsfoot flowers, like those of the poplar tree, 

 open before the leaves, enlivening the bare waysides in 

 the most beautiful manner, or at least when the sun 

 shines; for so dependent are they upon the light, that it 

 is only when the sun falls warm and animating that they 

 expand their delicate rays, slender as the finest needle, 

 and reminding us, in their elegant circle and luminous 

 colour, of the aureola round the head of a saint in 

 Catholic pictures. At first sight, the coltsfoot might b.e 

 c 



