ENCHANTER’S NIGHTSHADE— continued. 
The superstition, fostered by elaborately improved specimens, still lingers ; and 
Circ^a is to this day known as Mandrake in Devonshire. 
Nightshade is also explained by Dr. Prior as originating in a mistake, the Latin 
solatrum , an anodyne, being mistaken for solern atrum , a black sun, i.e. an eclipse or a 
shade as dark as night. 
As for lutetiana it merely signifies “ muddy,” the dull green foliage of the plant 
being often plastered with mud from the woodland rivulets beside which it grows. 
The six or seven North Temperate herbs that constitute the genus Circira have 
creeping rhizomes which render them troublesome weeds in gardens. Their stems, 
slightly swollen at the nodes, and their opposite, stalked leaves more nearly recall 
those of their beautiful allies the Fuchsias than do those of any other British plants. 
They are slightly toothed and, as in other plants in the Family, are full of raphides , 
needle-shaped crystals of calcium-oxalate lying side by side in bundles of twenty or 
so in a cell, and so long as to be visible to the naked eye if the leaf be deprived of 
its chlorophyll. 
In C. lutetiana Linne the whole plant is slightly pubescent with glandular hairs. 
Its flowers are borne in loose terminal racemes with very slender peduncles and 
pedicels : they are but an eighth of an inch in diameter ; but are remarkable for 
their completely dimerous symmetry. The two sepals spring from a short tube 
above the inferior ovary, which serves to hold the honey : the two white petals, 
alternating with the sepals, are deeply divided into two broad lobes ; and the two 
stamens, inserted under the epigynous honey-secreting disk, are at first widely 
divergent from the slender central style. 
The slender flower-stalks at first spread out horizontally ; but they are distinctly 
articulated at their bases and after fertilisation bend downwards. The anthers mature 
before the two-lobed stigma, and cross-pollination by flies sometimes occurs ; but, if 
not, the stamens curve towards the stigmas and self-pollination takes place. 
The inferior ovary is covered with hooked hairs which become stiff and bristle- 
like in the fruit stage, so that it is in fact a small bur. It is obovoid, two-chambered, 
and indehiscent, each chamber containing a single seed. 
Though tolerant of much shade and not particular as to sub-soils, this species 
occurs most abundantly and luxuriantly in places where the foliage canopy is 
comparatively thin, and in such situations it is, like the Dog’s Mercury ( Mercurialis 
perennis Linne) and the Wood Sanicle (Sanicula europcta Linne), locally the dominant 
species. 
