THE HORSESHOE VETCH— continued. 
have long claws, that of the standard having a triangular flap-like outgrowth which 
extends over the entrance between the upper stamens leading to the honey in the 
staminal tube. It is necessary for the bee to lift this in order to reach the honey, 
and this secures the thorough carrying out of the pollination. The keel is pointed, 
incurved, and resilient, springing back, that is, into its former position when the 
weight of the visiting insect is withdrawn. While the anthers are all similarly 
rounded in outline, the filaments of the five stamens of the outer whorl are dilated 
below their anthers so as to constitute the piston. 
The following is Lord Avebury’s excellent description of the fruit : — 
“The pod forms almost a complete circle, the concave margin of which is continuous, while the convex side is thrown 
into abrupt undulations. It might have been supposed that the pod would break up at the narrowest parts. As a matter of 
fact, however, the lines of dehiscence are in the centre of the thickest parts, so that the detached portions have the forms of 
horseshoes. Each segment would normally include two seeds, but as a rule one is aborted.** 
In this species the peduncle is, in general, more slender than that of Lotus 
corniculatus, and bears from six to ten flowers : the pod is rough with minute 
prominent granulations or points and, though flattened and two-edged, has not got 
the membranous flange-like margin of other species in the genus ; and the seeds are 
curved in a crescentic manner. 
These characters of the fruit and seeds chiefly impressed the older botanists. 
Parkinson says of it : — 
“ It hath no Greeke author to speake for it, but being of later invention it is generally called Ferrum equinum^ after the 
manner or form of the cods, in Italian Sferro cavalloy and of the Chimicks there and in Germany, Lunaria iiliquata.*' 
In her interesting volume on “ Herbals,” recently published, Mrs. Arber 
reproduces a plate from the “Phytognomonica” of Giambattista Porta (1543-1615), 
of Naples, published in 1588, in which a fruit-bearing plant of Hippocrepis appears 
alongside a plant of the fern Botrychium Lunaria Swartz, which has half-moon-shaped 
leaflets, with a crescent moon below it, both being termed “ lunar plants.” This 
belief in a connection between plants and the heavenly bodies culminated in the next 
generation in “ The English Physician ... an Astrologo-Physical Discourse of 
the Vulgar Herbs of this Nation,” by Nicholas Culpeper (1616-54), in which a 
marvellous tale is told of how “ Moonwort,” or “ Unshoo the Horse,” pulled the 
shoes off thirty newly shod horses in the Earl of Essex’s army at Tiverton. 
