St. John's Worts 



of development. Naturally this bountiful supply of 

 pollen attracts pollen-devouring insects, a great advan- 

 tage, since the St. John's Worts, as a class, do not 

 produce honey. The rounded seed-case in the centre of 

 the flower is surmounted by five columns, and contains 

 many ovules. As it matures into a capsule with 

 numerous seeds it turns reddish. 



The leaves are always set in pairs on the stalk in 

 this family, and are dark, shining and evergreen in this 

 particular species. It is a very hardy little shrub, with 

 no objection to shade, and quite oblivious of the drip- 

 pings from trees, that some shrubs so much dislike. It 

 is therefore specially valuable for the floors of woods 

 and shrubberies ; it is also an excellent cover for bare 

 banks and seems very much at home on railway em- 

 bankments. Its partiality for this last situation might 

 well be more generally encouraged, to the resultant 

 beautifying of our railways, for it has a very extended 

 period of flowering, and from early summer right on to 

 the new year it may be found in bloom. 



Also commonly grown, particularly in cottage and 

 old-fashioned gardens, is the vigorous Hypericum 

 Androscemum, the well-known Tutsan. This, too, ranks 

 as a native, albeit a rare one, of our British flora, and 

 in olden days was sometimes called " Park Leaves," 

 since it was frequently found wild in parks. It bears 

 particularly large leaves for a Hypericum, and a 



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