GOOSEGRASS OR CLEAVERS. 88 



being covered with flinty hooks. The rambling botanist, 

 when playfully inclined, detaches a yard-length from the hedge 

 and deftly throwing it against his unconscious companion's 

 back, causes a hundred hooks to catch in the warp or weft 

 of his coat. It belongs to the Bedstraws, a genus comprising 

 nearly a dozen British species, and distinguished by having 

 minute flowers, yellow, white or greenish, calyx minute, a mere 

 ring, the corolla four or five-lobed, honeyed. Stamens four, 

 styles two, united at their bases. The leaves are borne in 

 whorls of from four to ten, at distant intervals on the square 

 stem. In G. aparine the leaves vary from six to eight, the 

 flower-cymes arise from their axils, the flowers are white, the 

 fruit first green then becoming purplish. Flowers June and 

 July. 



White Campion (Lychnis vespertina}. 



On page 66 we gave a figure of Lychnis flos-cuculi, and 

 descriptions of that species and L. diurna, the Red Campion. 

 The present species was classed by Linnaeus as a mere variety 

 of L. diurnQ, the two being combined under the name of 

 L. dioica. In general characters the White Campion agrees 

 with the Red, but the calyx is more greenish, and the petals 

 are entirely white (occasionally reddish). The plant is larger 

 and more coarse than its diurnal relative for, as its name 

 signifies, L. vespertina opens in the evening and is fertilized 

 by night-flying moths. It is a fragrant plant, but its fragrance 

 is reserved for its flowering time not that its nocturnal 

 visitors require the scent to direct them to the flowers, for they 

 glow and gleam in the dark field and hedgerow from May to 

 September. 



