HEXANDR1A. MONOGYNIA. Berberis. 451 
Blossom yellow, sometimes streaked with orange. Berries red, (a little 
curved, oblong, very acid. E.) 
Barberry. Pipperidge-bush. Woods and hedges. On Chalk Hills. 
About Walden, Essex. (Frequent in Norfolk and Suffolk. Mr. 
Woodward. At the lower end of Loch Tay. Mr. Anderson. Hedges 
near Chudleigh, Devon. Rev. J. Pike Jones. Road side near Queens- 
ferry. Mr. Neill, in Grev.Edin. In Heaton Woods, Northumberland. Mr. 
Winch. E.) S. May—June.* * 
glands. Between every two of these glands a stamen is placed, so that whenever an insect 
(of which abundance present themselves in the course of a day, beetles, flies, bees, and 
wasps, seeking their own food), attempts to extract the honey exuded by the glands, it 
must touch, especially the lower and most irritable part of the filament, upon which this 
organ immediately springs up and proceeds to cover with its prolific dust the upper part of 
the pistil. Annals of Botany, v. 2. A process nearly analagous may be observed in Arisio- 
lochia, Orchis bifolia , and some few other indigenous instances : caprification has been 
long known to afford remarkable exemplification among exotics. E.) 
* The leaves are gratefully acid. The flowers are offensive to the smell, when near, but at 
a proper distance their odour is extremely fine. (Dishes for the table are often garnished 
with bunches of the ripe berries. E.) They are so very acid that birds will not eat them, but 
boiled wilh sugar they form a most agreeable rob or jelly. (Prosper Alpinus states that 
among the Egyptians they are used in fluxes and malignant fevers, for abating heat, 
quenching thirst, raising the strength, and preventing putrefaction, macerated and strained 
off. E.) They are used likewise as a dry sweetmeat, and in sugar plums. (In a cultivated 
state they are sometimes found without seeds. E.) An infusion of the bark in white wine 
is purgative. The roots boiled in lye, dye wool yellow. In Poland leather is dyed of a 
most beautiful yellow with the bark of the root. The inner bark of the stem dyes linen a 
fine yellow, with the assistance of alum.—This shrub should never be permitted to grow 
in corn lands, for the ears of wheat near it never fill, and its influence in this respect has 
been known to extend as far as three or four hundred yards. The first informa¬ 
tion I received upon this subject, was from a scrupulous observer of nature, of whose 
veracity I could not entertain a doubt. The year following, I examined some wheat sown 
round a Barberry bush in this gentleman’s garden, and found the greater part of the ears 
abortive.—Knowing a sensible farmer in whose hedge rows the Barberry was a common 
plant, I enquired if ever he observed the corn near those hedges to be any how particularly 
affected. His reply constitutes the first part of this paragraph.—(The village of Rollesby, 
in Norfolk, where Barberries abound, and wheat seldom succeeds, is known by the oppro¬ 
brious appellation of Mildew Rollesby. .This very perplexing effect has been attributed to 
the farina of the flowers of the Barberry, which is yellow, and resembles in some degree the 
appearance of the rust, or what is presumed to be the blight in its early state. It is, how¬ 
ever, notorious to all botanical observers, that the leaves of the Barberry are very subject to 
the attack of a yellow parasitic fungus, larger, but otherwise much resembling the rust in 
corn. Is it not more than possible that the parisitic fungus of the Barberry and that of the 
wheat may be one and the same species, and that the seed may be, in some instances at 
least, transferred from the Barberry to the corn? Annals of Botany, v. 2. That such an 
effect is produced, from whatever cause, cannot be doubted. Fifteen or twenty yards of a 
hedge were composed of Barberry bushes, by direction of the late Duke of Bedford. The 
wheat was completely blighted, scarcely a single grain being to be found in any ear growing 
within ten or fifteen yards of that portion of the hedge, contiguous to which the straws were 
extremely black ; and this blackness gradually diminished as the wheat was farther 
removed from the malignant influence of the Barberry. Other facts, equally decisive, are 
given in “ Purton’s Midland Flora and, according to the personal experience of Dr. 
Johns, as stated in his ingenious work entitled “ Practical Botany,” the same conviction is 
even more prevalent in the United States of America.—The orange-coloured spots fre¬ 
quently apparent on the leaves, and even on parts of the flowers of the Barberry, are 
occasioned by JEeidium Berberidis ; “ peridia elongated, cylindrical, the mouth furnished 
with deciduous teeth.” Grev. Scot. Crypt. 97 : a very different plant from that which has 
been recently asserted to constitute the Rust in corn. E.) 
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