.36 PLANTS: THEIR NATURAL GROWTH 



Winchester. The winged fruit, botanically termed a Samara, is represented, together with the 

 leaves, in our design numbered 333 : while the leaves alone are introduced in the suggestions, 

 figured 345 and 347. 



PLATE 21. 



" Flowers, as the changing seasons toll along 



Still wait on earth, and added beauties lend, 

 Around the smiling Spring a lovely throng 



With eager rivalry her steps attend ; 

 Others with Summer's brighter glories blend ; 



Some grace wild Autumn's ihore majestic mien ; 

 While some few lingering blooms the brow befriend 



Of hoary Winter, and with grace serene 

 En wreath the king of storms with Mercy's tender sheen.'' — BARTdir. 



The Water Avens (Geunt rivale), though not, by any means, an uncommon plant, is not so 

 familiar to us as many, partly from the marshy and moorland ground it thrives best on : partly, too, 

 from the general sombreness of colour of the flower-stalks thrown up. The plant is found in con- 

 genial situations throughout Northern Europe, Siberia, and North America, extending to the Arctic 

 regions. It is common throughout Scotland, Ireland, and the North of England : less so in the 

 Southern and Midland counties. The leaves are mostly radical, each having oiie very large 

 terminal segment, and a few much smaller ones below it, on the leaf-stalk. The flowers are few 

 in number, drooping, having a dull purplish calyx, and petals of a dusky orange. The petals, five 

 in number, are of the form shown in fig. 177. The calyx is of the character shown in fig. 182; but 

 it is never seen in Nature thus expanded. The five large and five minute segments, alternating 

 with each other, are also to be met with in the G. urbanum, and in the calyX-forms of the Fragaria 

 vesca, Potentilla reptans, Comarum palustre, and some few other plants. In the first of our designs 

 (fig. 180) we have a diaper, based on the single leaf (fig. 179) : while, in the second suggestion 

 (fig. 183), the whole plant is employed. 



The allied species (Geum urbanum) is an equally ornamental plant ; but as it is much 

 commoner, and as, too, we have already represented it in another of our works, we prefer to figure 

 the Water Avens. The flowers of the common Avens are much smaller, of a brilliant yellow, and 

 have not the drooping habit of the subject of the present plate. The whole plant is larger and, 

 instead of the damp situations chosen by the G. rivale, it thrives best by the hedgeside. The 

 generic name, Geum, is derived from a Greek word signifying to yield an agreeable flavour. Both 

 species have been held in esteem medicinally, and their roots, from their aromatic qualities, are 

 still in some parts of England dug up in the Spring, and added as a flavouring to ale and other 

 liquors. The common Avens is the Herb Bennet, or Herba Benedicta, of monkish herbalists, 

 names given on account of its supposed value, both as a healer of a long list of bodily ailments, 

 . and also as a charm against the greater ills with which gross superstition clothed a circumambient 

 spirit-world. The belief in its power of averting demoniac possession, and nullifying the power of 

 evil spirits, seems to have died out by Gerarde's time, though its medicinal credit was unimpaired, 

 for, while " commended against the biting of venomous beasts, the same is likewise a remedy for 

 stiches and griefes in the sides ; if it be boiled with pottage or broth it is of great efiScacie, and of 

 all other pot-herbes is the chief, not only in physicall brothes, but commonly to be used in all ; " 

 while Culpeper, a later writer, extols it for its virtues in the cure of diseases of the chest, the 

 healing of wounds internal or external ; as a decoction to comfort the heart and strengthen a 

 " cold brain," or, more important still, as a preservative against the plague or any other poison, as 

 an aid to digestion, and as a defence against so many other ills of the flesh, that, assuming its 

 efficacy in this direction, we feel that, even if its influence on evils of a spiritual nature be contested 

 and denied, it richly deserves its mediaeval name — the "blessed herb." 



A very curious plant is not uncommonly to be met with, which, though in some old 

 botanical works styled the Geum intermedium, is now recognized as a hybrid between the two 

 plants referred to above, the G. urbanum and the G. rivale ; in it the flowers are sometimes 

 erect, at others drooping, the calyx and corolla intermediate in form and colour, inclining in 

 general character sometimes towards one parent, sometimes towards the other. 



