PLANTS GROWING IN WASTE SOIL. 319 
TANSY. 
Tanacetum vulgare. 
FAMILY COLOUR ODOUR RANGE TIME OF BLOOM 
Composite. Yellow. Strongly scented. General, All summer. 
Flowers : tiny ; tubular; growing in a flat-topped umbel. eaves : pinnately 
divided into linear, deeply incised leaflets. Stem: two to four feet high, 
_branched at the top. 
“Soone at Easter cometh alleluya 
With butter, cheese and a tansay.” 
In certain parts of Ireland, where customs are perhaps not as 
changeable as they are in this newer world of ours, we might 
at Easter partake in the festival with which the name of tansy 
has been associated, ever since the eleventh century. It then 
came about that tansy was made into cakes for distribution 
among the poor, and the figures of two charitable sisters were 
stamped upon them. 
The medicinal properties that tansy possessed made it desir- 
able to use at this season of the year, to purge away from the 
system the phlegm that had been engendered by the eating of 
fish during the lenten season. 
“ On Easter Sunday be the pudding seen 
To which the tansy lends her sober green.” 
ELECAMPANE. 
\ ‘ = 
Inula Helentum. 
FAMILY COLOUR ODOUR RANGE TIME OF BLOOM 
Composite. Yellow. Herbaceous. General. Summer. 
Flower-heads : \arge ; terminal and composed of both ray and disk flowers ; 
the former few, long and narrow. eaves: large ; alternate ; clasping ; oblong ; 
serrated : the lower sides pale and woolly. Séem : four to five feet high ; stout. 
Roots: thick; containing a mucilaginous substance. 
There are flowers that speak to us of the sunshine, and there 
are those that cast about a shadow. Happily we associate the 
elecampane with the sun because its face is so bright and 
golden. It has also done many good deeds to man and beast 
during its long residence on the globe. In veterinary practice 
it is used largely in epidemics, and when made into a tea it is ex- 
