91 



MEADOW SWEET. SPIRAEA. 



MEADOW-SWEET, or QUEEN OF THE MEADOWS. S. iilmaria. 

 Plate 6, fiff. 18. 



A beautiful plant, rising three feet high, found abundantly in 

 ditches and the borders of meadows. The stem grows upright, 

 is leafy, and bears at the top a thick branched head of cream- 

 colored delicate flowers. The leaves are pinnate or winged, of 

 two or three pair of leaflets, between which are others very 

 much smaller the leaflet at the end is larger than the rest and 

 three-lobed ; the whole of the leaf is deeply serrated, and the 

 leaves of the stem grow out of a large serrated bract. Its 

 flowers are gathered by country children for their sweetness of 

 scent, though they soon wither. The calyx is bent back, and 

 the styles are twisted round each other. 



O.S. Willow-leaved Spiraea, a shrub common in gardens, and found 

 wild in the North of England and in Scotland; and Common Dropwort, 

 found also in gardens, and in pastures in the South of England. 



ROSE. ROSA. 

 SWEET-BRIAR ROSE. Rosa rubiginosa. 



Plate 6, fig. 19. 



This is the true Eglantine so celebrated in song, and it may 

 be known by its scent alone from all the other species of Rose, 

 except from one of them, the Rosa micrantha, which is a smaller 

 plant. Our present has some of the prickles hooked ; others 

 straight, and its leaflets hairy. The fruit is pear-shaped and. 

 smooth, with the calyx remaining upon it. From the fruit of 

 the other the calyx drops off, and thus they may each be known. 

 In the language of flowers, " for in Eastern lands they talk 

 in flowers," the Eglantine is the emblem of poetry itself, and 

 the delicate tint of its fragrant flowers deserve the universal 

 praise which it has received. Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, 

 Drayton, Dryden, Shenstone, Langhorne, Burns, Keates, and 

 almost all other poets, have been mindful of its charms. I 

 shall give but one extract, though I might have produced fifty, 



" The bree/.e of Spring, the Summer's western wind, 

 Robs of its odours none so sweet a flower, 

 In all the blooming waste it leaves behind, 

 As that the Sweet-briar yields it; and the shower 

 Wets not a Rose that buds in beauty's bower 

 One half so lovely ; yet it grows along 

 The poor girl's pathway, by the poor man's door. 

 Such are the simple folks it dwells among, 

 And humble as the bud, so humble be the song. 



