100 ENGLISH BOTANY. 



with a yellow eye. The calyx is 5-toothed, merely, not 5-cleft, as in 

 M. C£Espitosa, and the teeth are broader at ^^e base; the style is nearly 

 twice as long. Commonly the pubescence on the stem is spreading 

 in the lower part, but in var. |3 it is more or less adpressed, and in 

 both var. « and S it is eometimes nearly obsolete ; the pubescence on 

 the racliis, pedicels, and leaves in both the varieties is adpressed and 

 sparse. 



Great Water Forget-me-not. 

 Prenct, Mtjosoiis des marais. German, Sumjif-VergissmeinnicTit. 



This pretty plant is peculiarly the favourite of poets and sentimentalists. Most 

 abundantly does it grow beside brooks, rivers, and wayside streams, and, must we 

 say it ? even in stagnant ditches, asking only for moisture to adorn the most deserted 

 places with its turquoise flowers. In cultivation it will even dispense with this 

 requirement, and produce blossoms of a larger size than when wild. It is an excellent 

 plant for window gardening, and is improved by "bedding," as the gardeners call it, 

 blooming all the summer through, if properly treated. Beauty, however, is not the 

 sole attraction of this favourite flower ; it has associations connected with it in 

 legends, in poctrj', and in real life, which live long after its beautiful blossoms have 

 perished. For manj' centuries it has been regarded throughout Europe as the emblem 

 of eternal friendship and love, and it is hard to believe that the name, " Forget-me- 

 not," conveys any other meaning than the most tender one. Dr. Prior tells us that this 

 name, so long assigned to our Myosotis, was for more than two hundi'ed years given 

 to a very difierent plant in France and the Netherlands, the gi-ound pine, Ajuga 

 Chainwpiigs, on account, as was said, of the nauseous taste that it leaves in the 

 mouth. It was to this plant, he tells us, that it was assigned by all the earliest 

 writers on Botany, until in later times it was transferred to the Myosotis, with the 

 story of a dro■^^^ling lover which it now bears. This well-known story belongs to the 

 days of chivalry, when a knight and his lady-love were wandering on the banks of a 

 stream where grew clusters of these gemlike flowers. In those days the wish of the 

 lady was law to the knight, and she, desiring some of these lovely blossoms, caused 

 her faithful cavalier to rush into the stream to obtain them for her, when, overborne 

 by the cun-ent, he was carried away, and could but cast on the bank, with dying hand, 

 the flowers he had gathered for her, exclaiming, " Forget me not." We can see some 

 improbabilities in the old story, for these flowers grow chiefly near the borders of 

 streams, and, except when gemming some little island, are not found in their very 

 midst. The German will tell us, however, that the knight wore his armour at the 

 time, and so was rendered especially helpless in the current. 



In Mill's "History of Chivalry" we read that a flower bearing the name of 

 " Soveigne vous de nioy " was, in the fourteenth centurj-, woven into collars and 

 worn by knights, and that one of these was the subject of a famous joust fought in 

 1 iG5 between the two most accomplished knights of England and Prance. On this 

 occasion the fair ladies of the court presented to Lord Scales, the victor, a collar of 

 gold enamelled with " forget-me-nots." Whether the flower at that time associated 

 with the name was the same as the one we now write of it is almost impossible 

 to ascertain. One of our great botanists suggests, with a philosophical but nnpoetical 



ind, that the real signification of the name is after all due to the bright blue tint 

 and yellow eye of this charming flower, which if once seen is not likclj' to be for- 

 gotten. Pliny, who, like most of the early writers, has always some wonderfnl tale 

 to tell of the Egyptians, affirms that they believe that if this plant is gathered on the 



