XV. — THE BOG ASPHODEL. 
Narthecium os si frag inn Hudson. 
F ULL justice is done to the first vernal beauties of the year : in the height of 
summer, among many competing favourites, some may readily be overlooked ; 
and when autumn begins to be chill on bleak moorlands, fewer people are rambling 
about out of doors on the look out for the charms of Nature. Thus it is, perhaps, 
the situations in which it grows and its season ot flowering and fruiting which have 
deprived the Bog Asphodel of what we consider its fair meed of praise. 
It is the only British representative of a small group of genera, appropriately 
named Xerotide<r (from the Greek £17/305, xeros, parched), on account of their usually 
dried-up or xerophytic appearance, which were formerly classed in the Juncace<e , but are 
now looked upon as a Tribe of Liliace<e. Their xerophytic character has been explained, 
in the case of Narthecium , as due to the coldness of the soil in which they grow, so 
that, though water is abundantly at hand, its absorption by the roots is checked. 
This explanation might apply to the upland bogs in which this plant, which grows as 
far north as the Shetland Islands and at altitudes of nearly 3,200 feet in the Highlands 
of Scotland, is often found ; but the main factor influencing it is, perhaps, rather the 
acid character of the stagnant peat which can be tolerated by but few plants, such as 
the Cotton-sedges ( Eriophorum ), some Bog-mosses {Sphagnum), and the Sundews 
( Drosera ), which are the usual associates ot the Bog Asphodel. Plants capable of 
living under these acid conditions have been termed oxylophytes. Probably the humus 
acids in the peaty soil reduce their root-action, so that, wet as it is, such soil has 
been described as “ physiologically dry.” 
There are but four species in the genus Narthecium , all of them natives of the 
North Temperate Zone. Our British species does not occur to the south of the 
Alps and Carpathians. 
In many points its structure is certainly very closely related to that of the Rush 
Family, and some of these are characters that do not seem merely parallel adapta- 
tions to similar conditions but suggest affinity. There is a long, slender, wiry 
rhizome, with leaf-scales and a sympodial branching, from which the aerial stem 
rises, and a tuft of narrow, rigid, strongly-keeled equitant leaves, which might well 
belong to Rush or Grass. The flowering stem rises erect and rigid, some six or 
eight inches, twice the height of the leaves, and to this, apparently, the genus owes 
its scientific name (from the Greek va pOr]£, narthex , a wand). Its upper hall is thickly 
set in July and August with the golden star-like blossoms, each shortly stalked, a 
lanceolate bract below each pedicel and equalling it in length, and generally a smaller 
bracteole midway on the flower-stalk. The six petaloid perianth-leaves, which are 
pointed and linear-lanceolate in form and have membranous edges, spread widely 
into a flower half an inch across ; but afterwards close round the base of the capsule, 
their permanence being another Rush-like character ; and, golden as they are above, 
