186 COLIN CLOUT'S CALENDAR. 



tubular corolla ; and they are pretty enough in their 

 own unobtrusive way, though not nearly so striking as 

 the beautiful bright red berries which succeed them a 

 little later on in autumn. Asparagus is a wild plant of 

 the British south coast by origin ; and though it is now 

 becoming rather rare on our own shores, I have still 

 picked a few sprigs of late years on the rocky islets at 

 Kynance Cove in Cornwall, and at some other isolated 

 places along the English seaboard from Devonshire to 

 Wales. Its life-history is a curious and an interesting 

 one, for it forms a rare example in our own country of a 

 green leafless plant, with branches closely simulating 

 foliage both in appearance and function. 



The Y>rirnitive wild asparagus is a wiry herb with a 

 matted perennial rootstock, in which it stores up food- 

 stuffs during each summer for the supply of its succu- 

 lent green shoots in the succeeding spring. Under 

 tillage we have made it increase from its primitive sta- 

 ture of two feet or less to an average height of four or 

 five ; and at the same time its spring shoots, which are 

 slender and rather stringy in its native sands, have 

 grown much stouter and softer under stress of continu- 

 ous selection directed to this single end alone. But in 

 order to make it send up vigorous grass (as gardeners 

 call it) at the return of spring, we are obliged to let it 

 grow tall and bushy during the whole summer, so as 

 to elaborate plenty of rich materials, including its essen- 

 tial flavouring principle asparagine, in the creeping root- 

 stock from which next year's sprouts will draw their 

 whole supply of food. That is why, though we finished 

 cutting in June, the bushes must still go on cumbering 

 the earth till they die down naturally on the approach 



