TB.E SWEET WOODRUFF 
2II 
The woodruff, with its stellate, or starry, leaves, belongs 
to the natural order Stellatse. Anyone used to walk in 
the fields must have remarked a number of small flowers, 
with their leaves all round the stem in a number of whorls, 
looking like so many green stars or coronals. These con- 
stitute the stellate tribe. The careless observer of plants 
might call them weeds; but he who loves flowers will give 
them a kindlier name. There is the pretty yellow ladies’ 
bed-straw, with its abundant little golden blossoms grow- 
ing in hundreds on its stem. In more primitive times, 
when floors were strewed with flowers, and when couches 
made of the green stems from the meadow were deemed 
good enough for “ dainty limbs ” to repose upon, this, and 
its companion the white bed-straw, served for these pur- 
poses. Strow, or straw, being the old word for strew, the 
flower has kept its name in memory of a custom long 
passed away. This flower is common everywhere in Eng- 
land, on sunny banks. It is used by the Highlanders in 
dyeing red. The Norwegian peasants, who have a very 
picturesque appearance in their holiday dresses, wear at 
these times small skull-caps of a bright-red colour, and 
occasionally add to their attire a bright-scarlet jacket, 
dyed with the juices of the yellow bed-straw. Some spe- 
cies of bed-straw, with little white flowers, grow about the 
fields ; and one very pretty kind, the water bed-straw, may 
generally be found in summer time by the stream-side. 
Another stellate plant is the comm.on goose-grass, or 
cleavers; and it is well known to those wTo are used to 
gather wild nosegays : for to which of us has it not clung 
with an unwelcome tenacity, winding itself into the fringes 
of shawls, and laying hold of anything w^oollen within its 
reach? The seeds of the goose-grass are used as a sub- 
stitute for coffee; and the stalks are employed in Sweden 
to strain milk through. Its juice, when expressed, is an 
excellent purifier of the blood, and it is a famous village 
medicine. 
The madder, so much used in dyeing, is another plant 
of this order. It is said that if poultry eat this plant it 
imparts a red colour to their bones. 
