RAMBLES IN SARK 



IN SEARCH OF WILD FLOWERS. 



BY E. D. MARQUAND, A.L.S. 

 0 



No observant visitor to the Channel Islands can fail to have 

 noticed the wonderful profusion of wild flowers and ferns to 

 be met with everywhere, and their remarkable variety and 

 luxuriance. Wherever there is room for them to grow, there 

 they are. Even in the little island of Sark, three miles long 

 and a mile wide, the native flora is an exceedingly rich one ; 

 and probably it will come as a surprise to most people to learn 

 that between 400 and 500 different kinds of Flowering Plants 

 are to be found there growing wild. Some of them, it is true, 

 are very small and inconspicuous, so that they readily escape 

 notice unless specially searched for ; and some others can only 

 be distinguished by persons who make a particular study of 

 these things. But the vast bulk of the wild flowers of Sark 

 are sufficiently noticeable to attract the attention of even a 

 careless observer ; while they cannot but interest the true 

 lover of nature. And both will be all the better able to 

 appreciate and enjoy the beauty of this glorious scenery, if 

 they know something, however little it may be, concerning the 

 plants which form one of its predominant features. 



Now although every flower is exquisitely beautiful when 

 it is examined by itself and studied in detail, there are some 

 flowers which give a character to the landscape by their 

 growth in large masses. One of the most striking of these is 

 Gorse, or Furze, which sets the cliffs aglow in Spring with its 

 golden blossoms, and recalls the feelings of Linnaeus, the 

 great Swedish botanist, who at the first view of it in England, 

 fell on his knees and thanked God for a sight so glorious. 

 But for a mass of pure unmixed gold, nothing can surpass the 

 flowers of the Ragwort, as seen in great patches here upon 

 the waste land near the sea. Then there is the sheen of silver 

 in the bloom of the Blackthorn, which clothes itself in 

 glistening white while its leaves are yet only in bud. And a 

 few weeks later, in the early summertime, when " the earth 

 has grown an emerald and heaven a sapphire now," a fine 

 expanse of Oxeyes, or Moon Daisies, gleams here and there 

 among the bracken, like a sheet of snow. As summer wanes 

 [1910.] 



