WILD HOP. 110 



Wild Hop (Humulus lupulus). 



The Wild Hop may not unfrequently be seen in the copse 

 and hedgerow, especially in the South of England. It has a 

 thick branching perennial rootstock in the cultivated plant 

 called a " set " from which are produced several long, thin, 

 but tough twining stems that turn with the sun, and tightly 

 clasp the nearest small tree or shrub. It has no tendrils like 

 the vine, but climbs like the convolvulus by simply twining 

 with the sun as it grows. Its lobed and coarsely toothed 

 leaves are very similar to those of the grape-vine, but very 

 rough. The leaves are in pairs, and at the base of the leaf- 

 stalk is a pair of long curved stipules. The Hop is what 

 botanists term a dicecious plant, because staminate flowers only 

 are produced by one individual, and pistillate only by another, 

 making cross-fertilization imperative. It is not the insects, 

 however, that effect this crossing in the Hop, but the wind. 

 The flowers are all small ; the staminate produced from the 

 axils of the leaves in long drooping panicles. They have no 

 petals, but there are five sepals and five anthers attached to 

 their bases. Each pistillate flower has a membranous sepal, 

 an ovary, and two long tapering purple stigmas. Two of these 

 pistillate flowers are produced in the axil of a green, broad, con- 

 cave bract or scale. A number of these twin-flowered bracts are 

 united into a dense spike, and after fertilization this develops 

 into a large cone-like head of yellow scales with resinous 

 glands at their base, which yield a resinous substance called 

 hipuline. The true fruit is a little nut, which is enclosed in 

 the sepal under the bracts. It flowers in July and August. It 

 is the only British species. Beside their extensive use in 

 brewing, the flowers are frequently used to stuff pillows, their 

 narcotic odour inducing sleep. 



