262 THE ASSOCIATIONS OF FLOWERS 
may be regarded as a beneficent arrangement of Provi- 
dence that a plant so efficacious in curing complaints 
often engendered by a long voyage, should be one of 
the first to greet the sailor when he touches the land. 
The town of Barmouth, in Wales, is said to have owed 
its repute as a bathing-place to the quantity of this plant 
which grows in its neighbourhood, and which is taken by 
invalids. 
We have, besides, a number of cruciferous plants which, 
with their white or yellow flowers, are well known, and 
often found intruding on the forbidden ground of the 
garden. There is the shepherd’s-purse, with its little 
heart-shaped pouches thickly set down its stem; and the 
land-cress, and the treacle-mustard, or Jack-in-the-hedge, 
as it is often called (Erysimum alliaria), with small white 
flowers and large leaves — a plant which may be easily 
known by its powerful odour of garlic. And there is a 
taller plant, with small yellow flowers, most frequent in 
cultivated fields, with its long stem often three feet high, 
branched at the summit only, and looking like a tall 
chandelier with many branches. This plant is called the 
gold of pleasure (Camelina sativa). 
One of the prettiest flowers of spring woods and mea- 
dows, the ladies’ - smock (Cardamine pratensis), often 
called by the prettier name of cuckoo-flower, belongs to 
this order. It rises more than a foot high, and has deli- 
cately-tinged lilac petals. Its old English name, by which 
Shakespeare and our earlier writers call it, was given it 
because linen was formerly laid out in meadows to dry, 
and the appearance of a land covered with this flower was 
fancied to resemble that of one covered with linen. 
Shakespeare’s description of it, “ the ladies’-smock all 
silver-white,” is true to nature. Old Gerarde says of it, 
“ It flowers when the cuckowe doth begin to sing her 
pleasant notes without stammering.” It is often eaten as 
cress, and was formerly called bitter-cress. 
The dyer’s-woad (Isatis) is another plant of this order, 
sometimes found wild, and frequently cultivated for its 
blue dye. It has arrow-shaped leaves and yellow flowers, 
and is interesting because our forefathers employed it to 
stain their bodies, and acquired by its means the name of 
Britons, from the word “britho,” to paint. 
