234 ARALiACE^. [Adoxa. 



English or paintefl style of architecture ; the castellated and Elizabethan" man- 

 sion, and the Gothic church-tower of even the eighteenth century, look venerable 

 in a mantle of Ivy, almost as the fabrics of the real olden time. The rock and the 

 ruin, vestiges and relics alike of by-gone times, claim the Ivy indeed as their 

 peculiar covering; with its hard stiff leaves and rugged stems, like cords of iron, 

 it seems as if coeval with and enduring as themselves. 



The variety called Irish Ivy has a lighter and more cheerful effect than the 

 common form, and is better adapted for concealing bare brick walls and other 

 unsightly objects, by the greater breadth of its leaves. In this country we some- 

 times see houses completely embowered in Ivy, which is said to keep the walls 

 dry. To myself, I own this plant has something gloomy and repulsive when 

 clinging artificially to habitable buildings, though beautiful and appropriate as 

 the spontaneous vestiture of the ruined wall, craggy steep or hollow tree. To live 

 like an owl in an Ivy-bush is a way of passing existence I should beg to decline 

 sharing with those respectable birds, or with the admirers of the sort of domicile 

 they are said to prefer to all others. 



II. Adoxa, Linn. Moschatell. 



" Calyx half-inferior, 3-cleft. Corolla superior, rotate, 4 — 5 

 cleft. Stamens 8 — 10, inserted by pairs, each bearing a 1 -celled 

 anther. Berry 4 — 5 seeded. (The side flowers have the coroUa 

 6-cleft, the terminal one 4-cleft)." — Br. Fl. 



1. A. Moschatellina, L. Tuberous-rooted Moschatell. Sm. E. 

 Fl. ii. p. 242. Br. Fl. p. 181. E. B. vii. t. 453. Curt. Fl. 

 Lond. i. fasc. 2, t. 36. 



In moist shady places, woods, groves, on hedgebanks, and about the roots of 

 trees; very frequent, i^/. March — May. 2f. 



A smooth, succulent, fragile plant, from 4 to 6 inches high, of a tender lucid 

 green colour. Rhizoma creeping, of a few white, fleshy, swollen scales, and emit- 

 ting from between them several slender often somewhat downy fibres, and from 

 the crown a solitary fleshy runner. Radical leaves* 1 — 3, on long, weak, channel- 

 led footstalks, biternate ; leaflets roundish, 3-lobed, the lobes cut, ovate and obtuse, 

 obscurely veined, bright green, smooth and shining as if varnished beneath, each 

 lobe tipped with a minute point or mucro. Scapes one or two, taller than the 

 leaves, angular, furrowed, each bearing a little above its middle a pair of oppo- 

 site simply ternate leaves, on petioles broadly dilated or winged at the base, almost 

 connate. Flowers 5, in a close, solitary, terminal head, of a cubic form, pale 

 green, sessile, the 4 lateral ones vertical, mostly 5-oleft and decandrous, the ter. 

 minal one horizontal, 4- (rarely 5-) cleft and oolandrous. Calyx half-inferior, 

 much shorter than the corolla, in the lateral flowers of 3, in the terminal of 2 ovate 

 blunt segments ; in this last there is occasionally a rudimentary third lobe, and 

 the segments are sometimes minutely pointed. Corolla rotate, in 4 or 5 (rarely in 

 3) roundish entire segments. Stamens in the lateral flowers usually 10, in the 

 terminal one 8, standing in pairs on a glandular ring towards the base of the 

 corolla, having the divisions of the segments opposite to or pointing between each 

 pair ; fllaments very short, erect, and bearing a pale yellow, oval, incumbent, sin- 

 gle-celled anther, which bursts along its entire length by a longitudinal furrow : 

 occasionally one or more 2-celled anthers may be seen, borne on a single filament, 

 — a fact which strengthens the view taken by Sir W. Hooker, that the stamens 



* In a withy-bed adjoining Bridge-Court farm I found. May, 1845, abundance 

 of Adoxa having leaves of an unusually dark and dull green colour, somewhat 

 glaucous and marbled with whitish veins ; altogether looking so like the leaves of 

 Thalictrum flavum, as at first to deceive me into the belief that I had discovered 

 a second locality for that plant, so excessively rare in this island. 



