THE WOOD LOOSESTRIFE— continued. 
latter dehisces generally into five or ten teeth. The numeious angular seeds cover 
the large free-central placenta as in other genera of the Family. 
Lysimachia nemorum Linne is appropriately named, for nemus means a dark or 
shady wood, and this species is singularly tolerant of dense shade. Such shade, of 
course, will often secure for it the lasting moisture which it specially requires. We 
have often found it flourishing during the driest of summers in some spot of humus 
still remaining moist, lighting up the dimmest recesses of a wood with its golden 
star-like blossoms. Pena and Lobel, the first botanists to record it as a British 
species, well express its habitat when they write of it in 157° * n their “Adversaria, 
or Note-book, as 
“ Anagallis lutea . . . In Angliae nemoribus locisque opacis,” 
“Yellow Pimpernell, in groves and shady places in England," 
adding that they found it 
“ in quadam densa et amcena sylva Coventriae proxima,” 
u in a certain thick and pleasant wood near Coventry." 
Its square trailing stems, opposite pairs of ovate leaves, and regularly 
pentamerous blossoms resemble so strikingly the general habit of the commonest of 
our Pimpernels, the scarlet Anagallis arvensis, that it is not surprising that from an 
early date it should thus have been classed with them under this name Anagallis lutea 
and its English equivalent Yellow Pimpernel. Though the filaments of its stamens 
are glabrous, those of its congener the Moneywort are covered with white glandular 
hairs. The main difference, indeed, separating this species from those of the genus 
Anagallis is the transverse dehiscence of the capsules of the latter. 
The smooth, square, sinuous stems of Lysimachia nemorum are a beautiful pellucid 
red : the little pointed sub-sessile leaves are slightly fleshy and of a bright shining 
green, larger than those of the Scarlet Pimpernel ; and the flowers, which are from 
half to three-quarters of an inch across, are borne solitarily on slender, gracefully 
curving, axillary stalks. The sepals are narrow and subulate, and the petals are 
fringed with short glandular hairs. The filaments are very slender and glabrous ; 
and the capsule is small and globular. The latter may not split at all, or may divide 
lengthwise in two valves, or into ten very narrow ones connected in pairs. 
The whole plant is so graceful in form, so pleasing in its bright colouring, that 
it is not surprising that it is recommended for cultivation. There is no difficulty 
in growing it ; and, though a much smaller plant in all respects than its near ally 
the favourite Moneywort ( L . Nummularia Linnd), it possesses several distinct and 
beautiful features of its own. Its season of flowering is from May to July. In 
distribution it is typically Central Europaean, not occurring in Greece, Turkey, 
Russia, or northern Scandinavia. 
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