180 A GLANCE AT BRITISH WILD FLOWERS. 



so-called wood flower that could not be met with 

 more or less in the fields and along the hedges. The 

 main reason, perhaps, is that the need of shelter is 

 never so great there, neither winter nor summer, as 

 it is here, and the supply of moisture is more uniform 

 and abundant. In dampness, coolness, and shadi- 

 ness, the whole climate is woodsey, while the atmos- 

 phere of the woods themselves is almost subterranean 

 in its dankness and chilliness. The plants come out 

 for sun and warmth, and every seed they scatter in 

 this moist and fruitful soil takes. 



How many exclusive wood flowers we have, most 

 of our choicest kinds being of sylvan birth, flowers 

 that seem to vanish before the mere breath of culti- 

 vated fields, as wild as the partridge and the beaver, 

 like the yellow violet, the arbutus, the medeola, the 

 dicentra, the claytonia, the trilliums, many of the or- 

 chids, uvularia, dalibarda, and others. In England, 

 probably, all these plants, if they grew there, would 

 come out into the fields and opens. The wild straw- 

 berry, however, reverses this rule ; it is more a wood 

 plant in England than with us. Excepting the rarer 

 variety (F. vesca), our strawberry thrives best in cul- 

 tivated fields, and Shakespeare's reference to this 

 fruit would not be apt, 



" The strawberry grows underneath the nettle ; 

 And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best, 

 Neighbor'd by fruit of baser quality." 



The British strawberry is found exclusively, I be- 

 lieve, in woods and copses, and the ripened fruit is 

 smaller or lighter-colored than our own. 



