194 Bog-Trotting for Orchids 



" We shall take for seede the blacke spots growing on 

 the backside of the leaves, the which some do gather 

 thinking to worke wonders, but to say the truth, it is 

 nothing else but truraperie and superstition." ' 



The Osmunda, Polypody, Oak-Fern, Hart's-Tongue, 

 Spleenwort, Asplenium, Venus-Hair and Maiden-Hair, 

 as well as the delicate Ruta-Muraria — the Wall-Rue 

 found on Gregor Rocks — were described clearly by the 

 earliest herbalists. These records are full of errors and 

 confusion, since the natural afiBnity of these species was 

 not then known. 



The Lichens were known also as " Stone- Liverworts 

 {Hepatica), found with wrinkled, crimpled leaves on the 

 ground or moist sweating rocks, where the sun shines 

 seldom," according to Dodoens. Among the list of 

 mosses described, I discover that our Round-Leaved 

 Sundew, the little carnivorous plant, was anciently 

 classed as a species of moss, in close relation with the 

 Ground and Club mosses known as Lycopodium, But 

 the Sundew, unlike the mosses, produces a stalk with 

 white flowers. The plant was considered strange, be- 

 cause the stronger shone the sun upon the round, reddish 

 leaves, the more moist with drops of dew became the 

 plant; for this reason it was called in Latin, Ros So//s, 

 which became in English Sundew, in 1578. 



The Wall-Rue Fern was thought to resemble the 



Garden Rue, but is much smaller. Rue-of-the-Wall 



was common in Germany and Kngland in 1578, and 



was found upon old moist cathedral walls where the 



' Dodoens, History of Plants, p. 290. 1578. 



