LUNGWORT. 10 



for chest complaints. It is from these garden specimens that 

 our naturalized plants have originated. 



Lungwort has a creeping rootstock, from which arise stalked, 

 ovate, hairy leaves, dark green in colour, with white blotches. 

 On the erect flowering stem the leaves are smaller and not 

 stalked. The flowers consist of a five-angled calyx, a funnel- 

 shaped corolla with five lobes, five stamens, style arising from 

 a group of four nutlets and terminated by a rounded stigma. 

 Like the cowslip, Lungwort is dimorphous. It secretes plenty 

 of honey, and is consequently much visited by bees. Before 

 the flowers open they are pink, but afterwards change to purple. 

 As a garden flower it is also known as the Jerusalem Cowslip. 



The name is from the Latin, Pulmo, the lungs, in allusion 

 to the leaves, spotted like the lungs, and which under the 

 doctrine of signatures was held to indicate that it was good 

 for consumption and other lung troubles. 



There is another species which is really indigenous to this 

 country, the Narrow-leaved Lungwort (P. angustifolid), but it is 

 very rare, and occurs only in the Isle of Wight, the New 

 Forest, and in Dorset. It is taller than P. officinalis, the 

 leaves of a different shape, and the corolla finally bright blue. 



Lady's Smock (Cardamine pratensis). 



In all moist meadows and swampy places, from April to June, 

 the eye is pleased with a multitude of waving flowers which in 

 the aggregate look white, but at close quarters are seen to be 

 a pale pink or lilac. They are Shakespeare's " Lady's smocks 

 all silver-white," that " paint the meadows with delight." It is 

 our first example of the Cruciferous plants, the four petals of 

 whose flowers are arranged in the form of a Maltese cross. 

 Its leaves are cut up into a variable number of leaflets ; those 

 from the roots having the leaflets more or less rounded, those 

 from the stem narrower. The radical leaves as they lie on the 



