86 FAMILIAR WILD FLOWERS. 



The shepherd's needle is an annual, and flowers during 

 June, July, and August, the seeds ripening with the 

 corn, though we may often find some plants coming 

 into blossom in a field when others are showing the seed- 

 vessels. 



The root of the shepherd's needle is slender and elon-> 

 gated, whitish in colour, and throwing off a few thin 

 and long lateral fibres. The stalks rise, one or more from 

 the same root, to a height of from four inches to about r? 

 foot. They branch and spread a good deal, and are more 

 or less covered with hairs. Unlike many of the family, 

 they do not thicken very perceptibly at the joints. The 

 lower parts of the ntalks are often entirely crimsonish- 

 purple, or more or less striped with lines of that colour. 

 The leaves of the shepherd's needle, like those of the 

 carrot, hemlock, fennel, and many others of the umbel- 

 bearing order, are deeply cut up into five segments. At 

 the base of their stalks they form a sheath, which par- 

 tially encloses the stem from whence they spring. The 

 shape of the foliage may be better understood by a glance 

 at our illustration than by any attempt to describe it, 

 and more especially as in a work of this kind we must 

 either eschew botanical technicalities or else avail our- 

 selves of them at the cost of afterwards going into lengthy 

 explanations of their significance. The general effect of 

 the foliage is a bluish or greyish -green, very deeply divided 

 and intricate-looking mass. 



Flowers are said to grow in an umbel when all their 

 stalks spring from one point, and it often happens that 

 these lesser stalks again branch, and have each of them 

 a bunch of flowers at their extremity. When each stalk, 

 as in the cherry or in the flowering rush we have 



