XIX 



OUR WILD ORCHIDS 



" There is no great use of these in physicke, but they are chiefly regarded for the pleasant 

 and beautiful floures wherewith Nature hath seemed to play and disport her selfe." GERARDE. 



TT7ITH the coming of "the leafy wild columbine, with both white and 

 month of June," as Coleridge purple flowers, is in bloom. The king- 

 well called it, Nature has assumed her cups are gone ; but the pastures are 

 summer garb. The trees, with a few still gay with the meadow - crowfoot, 

 exceptions, are in full foliage, and the and on the banks of the stream the 

 maple and sycamore are in bloom, yellow iris is coming into flower. 

 The horse-chestnut makes a splendid June, too, is the month when many 

 show, laden with ten thousand clusters of our wild orchids may be found, and 

 of waxen flowers, and on the downs the perhaps no plants are so full of interest 

 hawthorn, or May-tree, is still clad in to the student of nature as those of this 

 its vesture of snowy whiteness. Along curious tribe. The order is an exten- 

 the tangled hedgerows the honey- sive one, spread over all parts of the 

 suckle is just coming into flower, and globe, and numbering, according to 

 before long the first wild rose will be Hooker, some five thousand species, 

 seen ; and never is the country more Many of the tropical kinds are what 

 beautiful than when the dog-rose and are called epiphytes, growing upon the 

 honeysuckle are in bloom. stems and branches of trees, but with- 

 in the woods most of the spring out penetrating their tissues, and large 

 flowers have now disappeared. It is numbers of them have of late years 

 wonderful how quickly and completely been cultivated in our hot-houses. All 

 the different species succeed one an- our British species are terrestrial, and 

 other. Only a short time ago the blue- although they cannot compare with 

 bells were in their glory ; they have many exotic kinds in the form or 

 now followed the primroses, as the colouring of their flowers, yet they are 

 primroses followed the snowdrops. But many of them very beautiful plants, 

 other flowers succeed those of spring, and they are all intensely interesting 

 There are masses of bugle and veronica, from the wonderful contrivances and 

 and red-robin and yellow crosswort in adaptations exhibited in their organs of 

 the open spaces in the wood, and in fertilization. These various contri- 

 some of our Hampshire copses the vances, the object of which is to secure 



