3^ COLIN CLOUTS CALENDAR. 



cither before their leaves, or else while the leaves are still 

 only half developed ; and of course such a habit implies 

 that material for their growth has already been laid b}' 

 elsewhere. For flowers are mere expenders of food, not 

 accumulators of food on their own account. The leaves 

 are the only part of the plant which can build up fresh 

 organised matter ; and the matter composing every flower 

 has been sent to it by the leaves, either immediately, as 

 in most annuals, or through the storehouse of a root, 

 stem, or tuber, as in most perennials. A hyacinth-bulb 

 is a good and familiar instance of such a storehouse. 



Here, for example, among the shady greenery of the 

 bank I can gather numberless flowering heads of the 

 perennial mercury — a queer little three-cornered green 

 flower, with copious clusters of its tiny feathery blossoms 

 hanging out upon long and graceful stalklets. This 

 mercury has a permanent creeping root-stock, in which 

 it lays by during the summer and autumn the material 

 needed for its next year's bloom ; and so it can come 

 out abundantly in the early spring before the shiny green 

 leaves are yet fully opened. On the other hand, its very 

 close ally, the annual mercury, grows afresh from the 

 seed every season, and therefore it has not accumulated 

 enough capital to begin flowering until the late summer 

 and autumn months. Yonder, again, on the slope of the 

 hill in the Fore-Acre, I see a pale bunch of primroses, 

 their short stalks all tightly clinging to the root-stock, 

 in which the material for their growth has been kept 

 safely through the dangers of winter : and if you tear 

 up the stock, you will see that it is large and starchy, 

 though it does not actually form a tuber, as in its near 

 and more brilliant relative, the cyclamen. Further on, 



