i82 COLIN CLOUT'S CALENDAR. 



the older ones of a rich glossy green as they spread along 

 the water's top, the younger ones not yet unrolled and 

 of a pale chocolate brown or fawn-colour in the half- 

 opened bud. From the centre, a spike of little greenish 

 flowers projects- above the level of the water, as plain and 

 unnoteworthy an inflorescence, I must admit, as anybody 

 could wish to see. Yet even here the plant as a whole 

 is made beautiful by its heart-shaped floating foliage, by 

 the long thin transparent sheaths that guard its stem, 

 and by the singularly lovely colour of its unopened 

 leaves. And if you look closely at the separate flowers 

 themselves, you will see that they each bear obvious 

 marks of their ultimate derivation from bright petal - 

 bearing progenitors in their possession of four little 

 green scales surrounding their stamens, the last stunted 

 relic of their original coloured corolla. This is a case 

 where degradation has only gone, comparatively speaking, 

 a very little way. We can still see on the face of the 

 flower the rudiments of its former petals, though all their 

 function is now lost 



Turn next to the bur-reed here, this much-branched 

 bushy-looking succulent plant whose long lance-like 

 leaves closely overhang the shallow edge of the pool. 

 Its flowers look at first sight like mere round knobs or 

 balls, stuck quaintly on to the side of the thick juicy 

 branches, and decreasing in size towards the ends of the 

 green twigs, from the diameter of a whiteheart cherry to 

 that of a small pea. But when you come to look more 

 closely into them, you can see that they are of two kinds, 

 the larger and lower ones consisting of little pointed 

 nuts, all crowded together in a dense globe ; the smaller 

 and upper ones composed of clustered stamens, irregu- 



