272 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN 



(not hardy), get their chief interest from their historical 

 associations. Other plants have a commercial and 

 officinal interest, but to -write of these would be quite 

 beyond the limits of a short paper ; others have a 

 geological interest, and others a geographical. By 

 plants of geological interest I mean plants that are 

 strictly limited to particular strata, like our Cornish 

 heath, which clings to the serpentine formation ; and by 

 plants of geographical interest I mean plants that are 

 specially interesting from their localities as wild plants, 

 such as the American plants which have found a home 

 for themselves on the west coast of Ireland, or the 

 Spanish plants on the south coast. It is very pleasant 

 to be able to show growing together the Antarctic 

 bramble with its curious skeleton leaves and white 

 thorns, and the Iceland poppy from the Arctic Circle, 

 which is reported to be the most northern flowering 

 plant known, — so extremely northern that I was told 

 by one of the officers in the North Pole expedition, 

 that if there was land there he should expect to find 

 the Iceland poppy. 



Even the names of plants supply many associations, 

 and in this respect, I think, plant growers are more 

 fortunate than students of some other natural sciences 

 (say, for instance, entomology), because the names 

 often supply much information either of the structure 



