PLANTS: OECHESTON KNOT-GRASS. 51 



The middle part of Wilts. Naked-boys (q. if not wild saffron) about Stocton. (Naked-boys is, I 

 suppose, meadow saffron, or colchicum, for I doe not remember ever to have seen any other sort of 

 saffron growing wild in England. J. RAY.) 



The watered meadows all along from Maryborough to Hungerford, Ramesbury, and Littlecot, 

 at the later end of Aprill, are yellow with butter flowers. When you come to Twyford the floted 

 meadowes there are all white with little flowers, wliich I believe are ladysrnocks (cardamine) : quaere 

 of some herbalist the right name of that plant. (Ranunculus aquatints folio iiiteyro et multum diviso, 

 C. Bankini. J. RAY.) The graziers told me that the yellow meadowes are by much the better, 

 and those white flowers are produc't by a cold hungry water. 



South part At the east end of Ebbesbourne Wake is a meadowe called Ebbesbourne, that beareth 

 grasse eighteen foot long. I myself have seen it of thirteen foot long ; it is watered with the washing 

 of the village. Upon a wager in King James the First's time, with washing it more than usuall, 

 the grasse was eighteen foot long. It is so sweet that the pigges will eate it ; it growes no higher 

 than other grasse, but with knotts and harles, like a skeen of silke (or setts together). They cannot 

 mowe it with a sythe, but they cutt it with such a hooke as they baffge pease with. 



At Orston [Orcheston] St. Maries is a meadowe of the nature of that at Ebbesbournc aforesayd, 

 which beares a sort of very long grasse. Of tliis grasse there was presented to King James the 

 First some that were seventeen foot long : here is only one acre and a half of it. In common yeares 

 it is 12 or 13 foot long. It is a sort of knott grasse, and the pigges will eate it. 



[The " Orcheston Grass " has long been famous as one of the most singular vegetable products 

 of this country. From the time of Fuller, who particularly mentions it in his " Worthies of 

 England," many varying and exaggerated accounts of it have been published : but in the year 1798 

 Dr. Maton carefully examined the grass, and fully investigated the peculiar circumstances of soil and 

 locality wliich tend to its production. He contributed the result of liis inquiries to the Linnsean 

 Society, hi a paper wliich is printed in the fifth volume of their Transactions. Some comments on 

 that paper, and on the subject generally, by Mr. Davis, of Longleat, will be found in the second 

 volume of the Beauties of Wiltshire, p. 79. That gentleman states that " its extraordinary length is 

 produced by the overflowing of the river on a warm gravelly bed, which disposes the grass to take 

 root and shoot out from the joints, and then root again, and thus again and again ; so that it is 

 frequently of the length of ten or twelve feet, and the quantity on the land immense, although it does 

 not stand above two feet high from the ground." Although the meadow at Orcheston St. Mary in 

 which this grass grows is only two acres and a half in extent, its produce in a favourable season, is said 

 to have exceeded twelve tons of hay. Shakspere, to whom all natural and rural objects were 

 familiar, alludes to the "hindering knot-grass," in A Midsummer Nighf* Dream, Act iii. sc. 2. 

 J. B.] 



Ramsons (alliurn ursinum, fl. albo) : tast like garlick : they grow much in Cranbourn Chace. 

 A proverb : 



" Eate leekes in Lide,* and remains in May, 

 And all the yeare after physitians may play.' ' 



[I have seen this old proverb printed, " Eat leekes in Lent, and raisins in May, &c." J. B.] 



* March. 



