Daphne 



Each flower lives from a week to a fortnight or 

 even three weeks (if the weather is very mild), and its 

 scent is strong and very fragrant. " For a few hours 

 the whole of a London house smells sweeter for its 

 [the Mezereon's] presence. Its perfume is peculiar and 

 not quite like anything else I know," says a recent 

 writer.* Then, if not pollinated, it withers and is 

 shed ; but if lucky enough to have been fertilised, 

 the ovary quickly swells, bursting the calyx tube, and 

 by May it is a smooth green berry of full size. In 

 late June and early July it ripens into a most alluring 

 scarlet berry whose sweet watery pulp contains the 

 single big black seed. In the berries the plant stores 

 its most virulent portion of poison, and various cases 

 are on record of their fatal effects upon both man and 

 beast. Gerard quaintly remarks, "Also if a drunkard 

 doe eat one graine or berry of this plant, he cannot 

 be allured to drinke any drinke at that time, such will 

 be the heate in his mouth and choking in the throat." 

 And he adds the general warning that this plant is 

 " very dangerous to be taken into the body . . . leaving 

 if it be chewed) such an heate and burning in the 

 throat that it is hard to be quenched," a warning that 

 is here heartily endorsed, for even while penning 

 the above lines the writer absently bit and tasted a 

 rose-purple flower and is now left with burning throat 



* Mrs. Earle, " Potpourri from a Surrey Garden." 



B 5 



