76 OUR ROCK-GARDEN 



ably our foremothers, made from it "a cooling 

 syrup for hot pestilentiall fevers." Besides its 

 name wood sorrel, which we may take to be a 

 corruption of its older name of wood sour, it was 

 called " Cuckowes meate, because either the Cuckow 

 feedeth thereon, or by reason when it springeth 

 and flouereth the Cuckow singeth most." It also 

 bore the name of stabwort, gowk-meat, and several 

 other names of more or less local employment. 



The Solomon's-seal is another early flower that 

 we are glad to welcome in our rock-garden, and 

 when it is once established it gives us no further 

 anxiety, but with each rotation of the seasons is 

 ready to step into its appointed place. It is a 

 plant of the woods, and throws up its graceful 

 flowering stems during May. The foliage is slightly 

 glossy and of a rather bluish green. The veining 

 tells somewhat conspicuously, and this feature, 

 together with the undulating character of the leaf 

 and its waved margins gives a marked individualism. 

 The pendant groups of flowers are found on the 

 under side of the stem. They spring in clusters of 

 two or three blossoms from the axils of the leaves, 

 are of a delicate creamy white, and of somewhat 

 waxy texture, and terminate in a pale green, about 

 the lower quarter or fifth of the blossom being of 

 this tint, but all so delicately gradated that no 

 suggestion of a dividing line between the two colours 

 is at all felt. The flower-bearing stems are some 



