Beautiful Flowering Shrubs 



due to the plant being a true Briton. Nevertheless, 

 those who do accord it a place know that, though its 

 foliage is not evergreen like that of the Laurustinus, 

 the individual leaves, with their three lobes and deeply 

 toothed margins, are larger and handsomer. Curious 

 honey-glands are found at the tip of two thread-like 

 structures at the base of the leaf stalk, and other 

 honey -glands are on the stalk itself. The flower 

 clusters are flat, as in the Laurustinus ; but while the 

 central flowers are smaller, those of the outermost ring 

 are much larger and showier. Still, the latter have 

 sacrificed everything to appearance to becoming lures 

 to the insect world and they contain no essential 

 organs ; the possession of a seed-case and stamens is 

 left to the small flowers of the centre. Hence it 

 is from the inconspicuous individuals alone that there 

 come in autumn those wonderful translucent berries 

 which, hanging among gloriously reddening foliage, 

 transform the slighted wild Guelder Rose into " a shrub 

 that seems to have come from that Garden of Aladdin 

 where the fruits of the trees were jewels." 



The cultivated form of the Guelder Rose the Snow- 

 ball Tree "which," as Parkinson said, "for the beauty 

 of it deserveth to be remembered among the delights 

 of a garden," knows nothing of tLis fruit jewellery. 

 It has thrown all its energy into transforming the 



whole of every flower cluster into great snowy balls of 



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