YELLOW TOADFLAX. IO6 



purple, the lower lip white, and the palate yellow. Local, in 

 sandy and chalky cornfields. From May to October. 



Yellow Water-lily (Nuphar luteuni). 



In some districts, where the Yellow Water-lily floats on the 

 bosom of ponds and sluggish streams, it is known as the 

 Brandy-bottle, partly by reason of its unpleasant odour and 

 partly on account of its flagon-like seed-vessel. 



It has a thick fleshy rootstock, which creeps in the mud, and 

 is rich in tannic acid ; it is said to be a fatal lure to cockroaches 

 if bruised and soaked in milk. Some of the leaves are sub- 

 merged, and these are thin, but the floating ones are thick and 

 leathery. The leaves are heart-shaped, the lobes not far apart ; 

 the stalks somewhat triangular in section, and traversed by a 

 great number of fine air-canals, as are the flower-stalks also. The 

 most conspicuous portion of the flower is the sepals, five or six 

 in number, which are very large and concave. The petals are 

 much smaller, and number about twenty ; they produce honey 

 at their base. The stamens are even more numerous than the 

 petals, in several rows, their blunt tips bent over away from 

 the many-celled ovary. The stigma is rayed. The fruit ripens 

 above water, and is, as we have indicated, flagon-shaped ; the 

 seeds are imbedded in pulp. Flowers from June till August. 



There is another species : 



The Lesser Yellow Water-lily (N. pumihiHi), which occurs in Shropshire and in 

 Scotland, from Elgin to Argyll, but it is rare. Its oblong leaves are divided at the 

 base, the lobes becoming distant from each other. The petals are rounder than in 

 luteum, the anthers shorter, and the rays of the stigma reach to the margin, which 

 is lobed. 



The name is from the Arabic for this or a similar plant, naufar. 



The White Water-lily (Nymphcea alba), though constituting the British represen- 

 tative of a distinct genus, is closely allied, as, indeed, is the magnificent Victoria 

 regia. of South American rivers, with leaves 10 or 12 feet across, and flowers 15 inches 

 and more in diameter. 



