Beautiful Flowering Shrubs 



alluring bladders they are too, very challenging to an 

 observer to press and "pop" them, as one "pops" a 

 blown-out paper bag, with an explosive crack, a crack 

 that is the sharper the riper the pod. Even the Eliza- 

 bethans, so we learn from Gerard, played this "popping" 

 trick upon the plant. Of course, the plant did not 

 design them for this game, but for a deep utilitarian 

 purpose, namely, that when ripe and they become de- 

 tached from the branches, they shall be lightly hustled 

 before the wind in all directions, and thus their now 

 rattling burden of loose seeds carried far and wide. 



The airy foliage, more fragile and on a smaller 

 scale in Coronilla than in Colutea, is composed of 

 leaves which are broken up into a terminal leaflet and 

 a number of pairs of lateral leaflets. At the base of 

 each leaf-stalk, by the main stem, is a pair of minute 

 leaf-structures known as stipules. In Coronilla, too, 

 the branches themselves are yielding and graceful, while 

 in the Colutea they are much more rigid and stiff. 



When one turns to the flowers one finds various 

 points of interest. In Coronilla they are in groups of 

 threes at the tip of the branches, crowning them with 

 colour as it were ; hence the generic name Coronilla 

 a little crown. The calyx of each is a small green cup 

 with five sharp points. Out of it on long thin limbs 

 project the petals, the top big petal the standard 



being set a little more apart from the rest of the flower 



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