BRITTEN : A PEW LOCAL PLANTS OF HIGH WYCOMBE. 



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Mezereon, the Lily of the Valley,, and the Snowdrop, — species which I have 

 selected because three at least of thom are pretty generally known, and 

 because they are especially interesting on account of their beauty or rarity. 

 The Coral-root (Dentaria bulblfem ) is one of the rarer plants of this country, 

 being found in but few of the English counties, and in but one Scottish 

 locality, in the county of Ayr. It is a very elegant species, growing usually 

 in patches in woods, and blossoming at the end of April and beginning of 

 May. Though a tall plant, and having bright coloured blossoms, it is 

 extremely liable to be overlooked, except in the flowering season, as the 

 stems and leaves soon wither, and the latter, in a young state, bear consider- 

 -able resemblance to those of the Gout-weed, /Ejopodluin podagraria). The 

 method in which the Coral-rool is propagated is somewhat remarkable : its 

 elegant flowers seldom, if ever, produce seed ; nor is this necessary, for in 

 the axils of the leaves are small buds or bulbs, which are described by 

 Parkinson (an exhaustive writer of the 17th century) as being of a sad 

 purplish greene colour, which being ripe and put into the ground will grow 

 to be a roote, and bear leaves like as the bulbes of a red bulbed lillie.' 

 These bulbs easily drop off, and are with difficulty retained upon dried speci- 

 mens; to them the plant owes its specific name hulbifera, or bulb-bearing. 

 The flowers are of a dtlicate purplish lilac colour, which, however, fades 

 away when they are dried ; their shape at once places them in the order of 

 cross-shaped flowers, or Cruciferse, and they have a faint, sweet scent. Both 

 the English name Coral-root, and the Latin Dentmia, or Tooth-wort, are 

 derived from the curious appearance presented by the root, which is long, 

 thick, brittle, and very white, running along horizontally at a short distance 

 beneath the surface of the ground, and somewhat resembling branches of 

 white coral ; it is covered with large white scales, which are supposed to 

 resemble teeth : when the root is dried, however, it shrivels up, and these 

 peculiarities are no longer observable. In the olden times. Coral-root, like 

 ■every other plant, had its " vertues." Parkinson says that ' a dram of the 

 powder of the roote taken for many days together in red wine is exceeding 

 good for inward wounds that are made in the breast and lungs,' and it is also 

 ' very beneficial to be drunke in the distilled water of the herbe called 

 horsetail.' This author appears to have first discovered the Djntaria to be a 

 British plant, for in his '■Tlieatnmi Botanicwn,' a quarto work of about 2,000 

 pages he mentions it as having been found ' at Ma^^field, in Sussex, in a 

 wood called Highreede, and in another wood called Eoxholes, both of them 

 belonging to Mr. Stephen Perkhurst at the writing hereof He gives an 



