THE BOG ASPHODEL— continued. 
each has a green keel down its under surface. The six stamens have subulate white 
filaments, covered for most of their length with long woolly hairs ; and scarlet or 
orange, linear, dorsifixed anthers, which burst inwards, curl up spirally and wither, 
while the filaments, like the perianth-leaves, remain into the fruiting stage. The 
narrow oblong ovary rises to twice the height of the convergent perianth-leaves. It 
is bluntly three-angled and tapers above into a short style surmounted by a simple 
stigma. This becomes receptive at the same time as the stamens burst, so that the 
flower may be often self-pollinated ; but, though it produces no honey, it has a 
delicate fragrance and is visited by insects for the sake of its pollen and may thus 
also be cross-pollinated. 
Attractive as are the blossoms of the Asphodel in July, the plant is far more 
striking when in fruit, when its erect elongated capsules are borne aloft above the 
black peaty soil of the moorland like living flames of yellow, orange, and red. 
Ultimately they split open in three valves from above downwards, liberating the 
numerous remarkable little seeds. 
These arise from near the base of the three chambers of the capsule and the 
body of the linear yellow seed itsdf is not more than a millimetre in length ; but it 
is attached by a slender thread-like stalk or funicle , eight or nine times as long, and 
its outer coat tapers at the other extremity into an equally long hair, so that the 
whole structure is as long as the chamber in which it is enclosed, nearly an inch, 
that is to say. Attention may be called to the fact that the brilliant display of 
colour in the fruit of the Asphodel is, like that of autumn leaves, a chemical 
change in the chlorophyll, which is not apparently in any way connected with seed- 
dispersal. The capsules cannot be termed fleshy, and we have never heard of their 
proving attractive as food to birds or other animals. 
Some of our earlier botanists called this plant the Lancashire Asphodel, and 
Lobel stated that it was known in that county as Maiden-hair, because maidens used 
it to dye their hair yellow. Its specific name ossifragum , i.e. bone-breaker, it owes to 
the belief that it caused a softening of the bones and rot in cattle and sheep feeding 
upon it, the truth being that this disease is produced by a parasitic worm or “fluke,” 
which passes part of its life-history in a pond-snail inhabiting the wet ground where 
Narthecium grows and part in the liver of sheep or cattle. The plant is, therefore, 
as Linnaeus long ago insisted, entirely innocent in the matter. 
It is, as we have seen, generally found on very wet peat-bogs or heaths, and not 
in meadows or other ground occupied by the social grasses ; therefore, so far as 
this species is concerned, we cannot hope to be among 
“ those happy souls who dwell 
In yellow mead of asphodel.” 
