THE BARBERRY — continued. 
In May and June the plant is gaily decked with the hanging racemes of bright 
yellow flowers, with short triangular bracts ; but their perfume is unpleasant. Each 
blossom is from a quarter to a third of an inch in diameter, with two or three whorls 
of three petaloid sepals, concave and incurved, so as to make the flower as a whole 
globose. The outer whorl of sepals is minute. Next come two circles of three 
petals each, these petals having each two large rounded orange nectaries at its base. 
The six stamens being also in two whorls, one lies horizontally across the centre 
line of each petal, its flattened filament being between the two nectaries. The ovary 
is surmounted by a large peltate style with a central depression and a circular infra- 
marginal stigma. The upper — or rather, as the flowers hang inverted, the lower — 
exposed surfaces of the bases of the filaments are extremely sensitive to contact ; so 
that when a bee, wasp, fly, or beetle approaches the flower from below and touches 
one of these spots, the filament springs inward to the ovary, while the anther-valves, 
with the pollen adhering to them, turn round so as to dust the visitor with the pollen. 
The oblong fruits are about halt an inch long, compressed, and slightly curved. 
They become orange-red with a surface bloom, with the exception of the style, which 
turns black ; and, though juicy, are both acid and bitter. The seed has a hard testa 
and albumen, so that, if swallowed by a bird, it is not digested. Neglected, however, 
by birds, until pressed by winter hunger, the ornamental bunches of fruits hang long 
on the trees, so that in some parts of Switzerland, where the shrub is abundant, the 
feet of the mountains appear red with them. 
In early summer the leaves of the Barberry commonly exhibit crowded little 
ochreous cup-shaped pustules, the fructification of a parasitic fungus, the Barberry 
Cluster-cup {yEcidium berberidis Persoon). Farmers long ago maintained that this 
fungoid disease spread to corn, producing on its green stems and leaves in June the 
similarly-coloured fungus known as “ rust,” or in some districts as “ mildew.” This 
opinion was pooh-poohed by botanists, who pointed out that this disease on corn, 
known as Uredo segetum Persoon, had a very different structure. It is now, however, 
certain that the farmers were right, the spores of the Barberry Cluster-cup sprouting 
on the young corn and giving rise within its tissues to fungal threads whence springs 
the “ Uredo ” stage. In autumn these same threads produce rows of dark-brown or 
black spores which can often be seen on straw, and in this form, known as Puccinia 
gramims Persoon, the fungus survives the winter and produces other spores which 
attack the Barberry. It has been calculated that this fungus alone causes a loss to 
the world of cereals to the value of fifty millions sterling per annum. 
