42 WINTER FLOWERS 



dendrons aforesaid, this fine barberry suffered damage on 

 the night of February 4, but in a curiously different way, 

 for which it is not easy to account. The rhododendrons 

 lost all their expanded blooms, which were nipped into 

 colourless pulp; but the buds about to expand escaped 

 unhurt, and are now renewing the display. In the bar- 

 berry, on the other hand, the expanded blossoms escaped 

 without injury ; whereas the closed buds along the upper 

 part of the spikes were blackened and will do no more for 

 us this season. 1 



This barberry, like all the rest of the family (and its 

 name is legion), is a true sensitive plant, the seat of 

 irritability being the base of the stamens. Insert a pin 

 or a stem of grass gently into the flower, and you will see 

 the stamens close sharply round the style. No doubt this 

 is a provision for cross-fertilisation, the usual intruder 

 being a fly or other insect, which, being bespattered with 

 pollen, carries some of it with him, and deposits it on the 

 stigma of the next flower he enters. In fact, the blow 

 inflicted by the closing stamens is sufficiently smart to 

 frighten away a timid or thin-skinned insect, and drive it 

 to another flower. 



Among the most constant of winter-flowering shrubs is 

 the quaint witch-hazel, Hamamelis arbor ea, which never 

 fails to set its sprays thickly with curious flowers like 

 tiny orchids, with crimson or claret-coloured centres and 

 crinkled yellow petals, so constituted as to set even severe 

 frost at defiance. There are three or four other species of 

 witch-hazel, the Asiatic H. japonica and tnollis, and the 

 American H. virginica, the last-named being the source 



1 In the present winter (1906-7) this barberry has sustained 19 degrees 

 of dry frost with perfect impunity. 



