CHAPTER VII 



EARLY SUMMER FLOWERS 



The Wild Strawberry The Bird's-Foot Trefoil The Daisy and the Feverfew 

 The Perennial Rye-Grass The Garden Sage The Cuckoo Flower and 

 the Red Campion The White Meadow Saxifrage and the London Pride 

 Herb-Robert The Spotted Orchis The Greater Plantain and the Ribwort 

 Plantain The Charlock The Shepherd's Purse The Common Avens 

 The Bugle The Yellow Iris The Germander Speedwell 



THE WILD STRAWBERRY (Fragaria vesca, L.). 



THE structure and the mode of reproduction of the Straw- 

 berry may be studied in any of the numerous species or varieties 

 which are in cultivation, but perhaps better in the common Wild 

 Strawberry of our woods and hedge-banks. The conspicuous 

 white flowers of this plant are to be seen everywhere in April 

 and May, while the fruits, which ripen in succession as the flowers 

 fade, have the same construction as those of the cultivated 

 Strawberry, though they are much smaller. 



If a plant in flower be dug up and examined it will be found to 

 possess a firm, woody, underground stem, covered with brown 

 scales. This stem may be simple or branched. From it spring 

 roots which grow down into the soil. At the end of the stem 

 we find a rosette of foliage leaves and a single inflorescence. 

 The inflorescence does not spring, as might perhaps have been 

 expected, from the centre of the group of leaves, but stands to 

 one side of this. It does not, in fact, belong to the same branch 

 as that bearing the foliage leaves, but was formed in the centre 

 of the rosette of leaves of the preceding season. These have now 

 withered, and the inflorescence marks the end of the shoot on 

 which they were borne. A bud in the axil of one of the leaves 

 of last year has continued the growth of the plant in the present 



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