56 



PROSERPINA. 



in the bud ; a convolvulus twists them, the one expanding 

 into a flat cinquefoil of separate petals, and the other into a 

 deep- welled cinquefoil of connected ones. 



I find an excellent illustration in Veronica Polita, one of 

 the most perfectly graceful of field plants because of the light 

 alternate flower stalks, each with its leaf at the base ; the 

 flower itself a quatrefoil, of which the largest and least petals 

 are uppermost. Pull one off its calyx (draw, if you can, the 

 outline of the striped blue upper petal with the jagged edge 

 B of pale gold below), and 



then examine the relative 

 shapes of the lateral, and 

 least upper petal. Their 

 under surface is vary cu- 

 rious, as if covered with 

 white paint; the blue 

 stripes above, in the di- 

 rection of their growth, 

 deepening the more deli- 

 cate colour with exquisite 

 insistence. 



A lilac blossom will 

 give you a pretty exam- 

 ple of the expansion of the 

 petals of a quatrefoil above the edge of the cup or tube ; but 

 I must get back to our poppy at present. 



15. What outline its petals really have, however, is little 

 shown in their crumpled fluttering ; but that very crumpling 

 arises from a fine floral character which we do not enough 

 value in them. We usually think of the poppy as a coarse 

 flower ; but it is the most transparent and delicate of all the 

 blossoms of the field. The rest nearly all of them depend 

 on the texture of their surfaces for colour. Bat the poppy is 

 pain ted glass ; it never glows so brightly as when the sun shines 

 through it. Wherever it is seen against the light or with the 

 light always, it is a flame, and warms the wind like a blown 

 ruby. 



In these two qualities, the accurately balanced form, and 



PIG. 6. 



