In My Vicarage Garden 



rapid climber, and producing an abundance of 

 sweet-scented flowers in October, somewhat re- 

 sembling the South European C. flammula, but 

 with much handsomer foliage ; the other is 

 C. orientalis, or graveolens, with pale yellow 

 flowers, or in the variety Tuganica, golden yellow, 

 followed by very beautiful heads of seed, as large 

 or larger than the Traveller's Joy, but much more 

 silky. Before leaving the flowers of autumn I 

 feel bound to say something about the autumnal 

 gorse {U. nanus), because in writing about it 

 among early spring flowers I was taken to task 

 for confusing between the common and dwarf 

 gorse ; my critics saying that the dwarf gorse is 

 the flower of summer, and the common one of 

 winter and spring. I cannot fully go into the 

 question, but I may say very shortly, and I hope 

 without rudeness, that I was right ; I have lately 

 seen the dwarf one in full flower, and so it will 

 remain till after Christmas, in many places nestling 

 under its taller relation. 



I have left myself too small a space for the 

 colours of autumn ; it is a very large subject, and 

 the more I study them the more I feel how little 

 I know about them, and the more also I feel 

 surprised that so little account of them is ever 

 taken in scientific descriptions. To me it seems 

 that the autumn colours of tree foliage are as 

 absolutely a fixed mark of the tree as the colour 

 of the flowers, and to some extent even more so. 

 But scientific botany will not allow of it. Long 

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