3io 
PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
when the Scolymus flowers, i. e. in hot weather or summer 
(‘Op. et dies, 5 582). This plant crowned with its golden 
flowers is abundant throughout Sicily. 55 — Hogg’s Classical 
Plants of Sicily. There is the Fish-bone Thistle ( Chamcepeuce 
diacantha ) from Syria, a very handsome plant, and, like most 
of the Thistles, a biennial; but if allowed to flower and go to 
seed, it will produce plenty of seedlings for a succession of 
years. And there is a grand scarlet Thistle from Mexico, the 
Erytlirolena conspicua (“Sweet,” vol. ii. p. 134), which must be 
almost the handsomest of the family, and which was grown in 
England fifty years ago, but is now almost lost. There are 
many others that may deserve a place as ornamental plants, 
but they find little favour, for “ they are only Thistles.” 
Any notice of the Thistle would be imperfect without some 
mention of the Scotch Thistle. It is the one point in the 
history of the plant that protects it from contempt. We dare 
not despise a plant which is the honoured badge of our neigh¬ 
bours and relations, the Scotch; which is ennobled as the 
symbol of the Order of the Thistle, that claims to be the most 
ancient of all our Orders of high honour; and which defies 
you to insult it or despise it by its proud mottoes, “ Nemo me 
impune lacessit,” “ Ce que Dieu garde, est bien garde.” What 
is the true Scotch Thistle even the Scotch antiquarians cannot 
decide, and in the uncertainty it is perhaps safest to say that 
no Thistle in particular can claim the sole honour, but that it 
extends to every member of the family that can be found in 
Scotland. 1 
Shakespeare has noticed the love of the bee for the Thistle, 
and it seems that it is for other purposes than honey gathering 
that he finds the Thistle useful. For “ a beauty has the Thistle, 
when every delicate hair arrests a dew-drop on a showery April 
morning, and when the purple blossom of a roadside Thistle 
turns its face to Heaven and welcomes the wild bee, who lies 
close upon its flowerets on the approach of some storm cloud 
until its shadow be past away. For with unerring instinct the 
1 See an interesting and fanciful account of the fitness of the Thistle as 
the emblem of Scotland in Ruskin’s “Proserpina,” pp. 135—139. 
