RAGGED ROBIN. 66 



The Red Campion (Lychnis diurna), with stem covered with soft hairs, which are 

 sticky near the upper part of the plant. The flower has a singularly neat appear- 

 ance, altogether lacking the ragged character of flos-cuciili. The petals, instead 

 of being deeply cut, as in that species, are merely divided into two lobes. The 

 calyx is reddish, with triangular teeth. The anthers and stigmas are produced in 

 separate flowers ; occasionally flowers may be found with both organs, but one or 

 the other will be undeveloped. 



The Red Campion is a plant of the hedge-bank and the copse, where it may be 

 found in flower from June to September. In Cornwall it keeps fully in flower till 

 the end of the year. This page was written there a few days before Christmas, when 

 the fern-clad rocky hedgerows were lit up with great numbers of the flowers of Red 

 Campion and Herb-Robert. 



The name Lychnis is from the Greek, Luchnos, a lamp or torch, the application 

 of which is obscure. 



Bluebottle or Cornflower (Centaurea cyanus). 



The Centaureas are closely allied to the thistles, and share 

 with them that hard-headedness which makes the thistle so 

 good a type of the canny Scot. The Bluebottle must not be 

 sought in the company of the thistles on wastes and in neg- 

 lected corners of pasture, but, as one of its folk-names indicates, 

 in the cornfield. Beginning to flower in June, it keeps up the 

 display of bright blue until the reapers cut it down. 



Bluebottle is a composite flower, and it should afford interest 

 to the reader, when he finds the blossoms, to institute a com- 

 parison between it and that of the Daisy or other of the Com- 

 posites we have already described. 



The thin stem is but slightly branched, and the long lower 

 leaves are much cut up and very attenuated. Nearer the 

 summit of the stems the leaves are simpler, and reduced to a 

 very slight width. The stems and the under sides of the leaves 

 are covered with loose cottony fibres. The flower-heads have 

 for involucre a number of greenish scales, with toothed brown 

 margins. The ray-florets are bright blue, their free ends divided 

 into five teeth ; the inner or disc-florets are much darker. The 

 stamens are irritable, and if touched withdraw into the tube. 



F 



