WEEDS AND WILD PLANTS. 



34S 



highest possible luxuriance on the neighbouring chalk downs, where it 

 attains a perfection unknown elsewhere. I love this weed for the 

 beauty of its blossom, as well as for the delicious odour which the 

 flower exhales. It does not, however, attain to so great a perfection 

 in my garden as it does on the chalk hills. 



Growing amongst my Sempervivums is the lovely Potentilla Anserina 

 (fig. 788). The only mode of destroying it without disturbing our 

 plants is continually to strip it of its leaves. It is one of the most 

 ..v^ beautiful of all the plants of its class, from the 

 brilliancy of its flowers and the colour of its leaves 

 but yet amongst cultivated plants it must be 

 ranked as one of the most noxious of weeds. 



Amongst other weeds which we should like 

 to entirely dispense with, although we have it to 



Fig. 787. — Convolvulus arvensis. 



Fig. 78S. — Potentilla Anserina. 



Fig. 789. — Arum maculatum. 



a very limited extent, is the Couch grass (see Grasses). Every 

 portion of its root must be removed by turning over the ground 

 repeatedly in summer. At Naples the underground stems of this, or 

 of a species like it, form the chief food for the horses. 



Groundsel and Chickweed trouble us, but a good gardener is always 

 cutting off their heads, and so we are upon the whole very free from 

 these w^eeds, considering that mine is a half-wild garden. 



The Arum maculatum (fig. 789) is an interesting plant, that thrives 

 in our hedge-rows. I have attempted to introduce, but without suc- 

 cess, a small and curious species of arum from the shores of the 

 Mediterranean, where it is, in some places, so thick as literally to cover 

 the ground. 



