54 WILI; FLOWERS. 



said to have driven the ancient philosopher to 

 madness, — yet if any British flower might be 

 called a sensitive plant, it is this. Not only 

 does its foliage close and droop at the approach 

 of the evening dews, but at the coming rain, 

 even before the " storm sings i' the wind," the 

 wood-sorrel compresses its leaves, and even 

 when handled roughly in gathering, it shrinks 

 from the touch. The wood-sorrel grows es- 

 pecially around the trunks of decayed trees. 

 That pleasing poet Charlotte Smith, describes 

 the flower-gatherer, 



" Who from the tumps with bright green mosses clad 

 Plucks the wood-sorrel, -vvith its light green leaves 

 Heart-shaped, and triply-folded; and its root 

 Creeping lilve beaded coral ! " 



The plant is generally most plentiful in the 

 thickest part of the wood. 



Wood-sorrel is abundant on the Alps and 

 other mountains, and is found as far to the 

 uorth of our globe as travellers have ever yet 

 penetrated. In Lapland, it is so plentiful and 

 so much used, that Linnaeus says the natives of 

 that country take scarcely any other vegetable 

 food than sorrel and angelica. The great bot- 

 anist adds, that it is in Norway the prmmla, or 

 first flower of spring. 



The old herbalists had a variety of names for 

 the woodland flower. It was called wood-sower, 

 stub wort, wood trefoil, cuckoo's meat, and alle- 

 luya. Gerarde says of it, " Apothecaries and 

 herbalists call it alleluya and cuckowe's meat ; 

 either because the cuckowe fecdeth thereon, or 



