THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 
Vol. 11. February 15, 1902. No. 2 
FLOWERS OF THE ENGLISH WAYSIDES. 
By C. F. Saunders. 
To an American visiting an English countryside for the first 
time, the common wild flowers by the way are an unfailing source 
of pleasure. Like the people, who^ speak the same tongue with 
himself but with enough difference to clothe their language with 
a marked individuality of its own, the English flora continually 
reminds him of his home plants but at the same time interests him 
by the presence of many striking differences. The families and 
genera are usually such as he has been familiar with, but very often 
the species are different. Thus the common daisy of England is 
not our ubiquitous O'X-eye — though this grows in Britain, too — 
but that pretty little "crimson-tippet" flower immortalized by the 
poet Burns, which we know only as a greenhouse or garden plant. 
So, too, the wild geranium of English meadows is not our well- 
known spotted cranesbill, but a showy blue flower much resem- 
bling its American cousin in other respects.. 
The thistles are as common over there as here, but the Amer- 
ican must needs consult his book to- determine the species. One 
of the most striking is the stemless thistle (Carditus acaulis), 
whose single head of royal purple bloom is borne sitting flat on 
the ground in the midst of a rosette of radical leaves. This 
species is common in Scotland and it has been claimed that it was 
a plant of it that figured in that historic episode which led to. the 
adoption of the thistle as the Scottish national emblem. The pea 
family is represented by many interesting species unfamiliar to 
American eyes. One with pretty rose-colored flowers is quaintly 
called rest harrow, because the long tangled roots impede the 
working of the ground. The Dyer's Broom {Genista tinctoria) 
forms bright yellow patches in many pastures. To' the same fam- 
