THE SEA BUCKTHORN— continued. 
The carpellate flowers are solitary and consist of a tubular two-lobed calyx 
which ultimately forms the orange-yellow berry. The style is short ; but, as is 
usual in wind-pollinated flowers, the stigma is long. 
The fruits ripen in September or October, when they are about half an inch 
in diameter. They have the smell of rotten apples and a slightly acid taste, and are 
not eaten by birds until other berries are gone. Children often eat them and they 
are perfectly harmless. An amusing instance of modern belief in the doctrine of 
signatures is recorded. “ A woman had the jaundice and said that she thought 
perhaps that’s what the yellow berries was sent for — they must be sent for 
something — so she took some to try, but they did her no good nor yet no harm.” 
Hippophae Rhamnoides, the specific name of which merely suggests its likeness 
in habit to the Buckthorn ( Rhamnus catharticus Linne), is unquestionably indigenous 
on the east coast of England, where it often forms a prominent feature in what 
ecologists term the “fixed dune association.” From four to six feet high, it 
constitutes, with Elder, Dwarf-Willow, and pink-flowered Brambles ( Rubus discolor 
Weihe and Nees), a dense scrub on the poorest of sand. It will grow perfectly well, 
however, away from the sea and repays cultivation in good garden soil. It has 
become naturalised in various parts of Scotland and Ireland ; but is not there 
indigenous. When well established it produces numerous suckers which can be 
detached with roots to form new plants ; or it can be propagated by layers or cuttings 
during the summer, or from seed. 
As might be expected, it is only in Norfolk, where the plant is specially frequent 
in a wild state, that it can be said to have any true popular name. Sea Buckthorn, 
Sallow-thorn, and Willow-thorn are practically merely book-names ; but the fisher-folk 
of the Norfolk coast are said to call it Wyvables, Wirwivvle, or Wyrviole, though when 
asked what the word meant they could only say, “ It means nothing — it is only the 
name we know for it.” 
A closely allied species Hippophae' salicifolia D . Don extends northward from the 
Himalaya and is stated by Mr. Ernest Wilson to grow from thirty to fifty feet or 
more in height with a girth of from four to ten, or even twelve or fifteen, feet in 
the forests on the Chino-Tibetan border. In that region it frequently occurs amid 
the shingle and boulders of dry water-courses — a situation not very dissimilar to 
that of its humbler European representative. 
Lord Avebury describes the caterpillar of a hawk-moth as feeding upon the 
leaves of our species and as being rendered inconspicuous by orange patches 
curiously resembling the fruits in size and colour ; but the orange spots on the 
green larva of Deilephila hippophaes, which must be the species referred to, are quite 
minute and would, therefore, not have any such mimicking effect. 
