The Botanical Instinct 
They gather it and use the base of the flower 
in making omelettes not devoid of merit; 
this base is very fleshy, is saturated in milk 
with a nutty flavour and is delicious even 
when raw. 
Sometimes they use the plant as an hygro- 
meter. Nailed to the lintel of the byre, the 
carlina closes its flower when the air is moist 
and opens it in a superb sun of golden scales 
when the air is dry. With beauty added, it 
is the inverse equivalent of the celebrated 
rose of Jericho, an unsightly bundle which 
expands in wet and shrivels in dry weather. 
If the rustic hygrometer were a foreigner, 
it would be famous; being an ordinary 
product of Mont Ventoux, it is slighted. 
The Larinus, for her part, knows it very 
well, not as a meteorological apparatus, a 
very useless thing to her for foretelling the 
weather, but as provender for her family. 
Many a time, on my excursions in July and 
August, I have seen the Bear Weevil very 
busy on the mountain artichoke wide open in 
the sun. There is no doubt what she was 
doing there: she was attending to her eggs. 
I regret that my then preoccupations, 
which were concerned with botany, did not 
83 
