1858.] THE CLENT HILLS. 399 



Many of the plants already mentioned grow in the woods. 

 The Foxglove and the Knobby-rooted Figwort attain a very 

 great size in shady places, usually averaging two yards iu height, 

 and occasionally they are much taller. In summer and autumn 

 Asperula odorata, the Sweet-smelling Woodruff, is one of the 

 most abundant woodland plants. It is also common in hedges. 

 This herb is remarkable for retaining its fragrance for many 

 years, though it has only an almost imperceptible odour when 

 recently gathered. As it dries gradually, it gradually yields a 

 rather powerful but agreeable smell of new hay. It may be 

 readily distinguished from all our native wood-wildlings by its 

 whorled leaves, arranged around the frail, straggling stem like 

 rays, or like the spokes of a wheel without the felloes, or like the 

 radii of a circle without the circumference, and by its pretty 

 clusters of small white flowers. When ripe, its fruit is roundish, 

 rough with bristles, and about the size of coriander-seeds. 



The beautiful Lysimachia nemorum, Wood Loosestrife, also 

 abounds. This has bright yellow flowers, weak, trailing stems, 

 and opposite, ovate (like the vertical section of an egg) leaves. 

 Its twin sister, the Creeping Jenny of the London peripatetic 

 florists, and the popular ornament of many windows in the 

 suburbs of London, will help those who know the latter to 

 identify the former. The Pennywort or Moneywort {Lysimachia 

 Nummularia) , or Creeping Jenny of the London cries, is not 

 nearly so delicate and lovely a plant as its woodland relative. 

 The latter, if it would bear the dry and smoky atmosphere of 

 London, would be a more ornamental plant than the former. 

 But it loves moist air and shade ; it cannot bear the sun to look 

 on its loveliness. It always shuns the " garish eye of day," and 

 hides its beauties in some damp, sequestered spot, where it is 

 rarely disturbed but by those who know its worth, and by some 

 others whose delight is to draw out merit from obscurity. But 

 we are dealing with plants, not with morals. 



The Wood Spurge {Euphorbia amyydaloides), and the officinal 

 Valerian, the Wild Honeysuckle, the Dog's Violet, and several 

 species of St. John's-worts, grow in almost all woods, and they 

 are not wanting in the woods of Clent. 



One of our critical plants, as they are now called {plant(B 

 criticce), is plentiful about IJffmore Forest, viz. Hypericum 

 dubimn, a species which approaches very closely to //. perfo- 



