September GO. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
WEEKLY CALENDAR. 
405 
m ; w 
D ! D 
SEPT. 30—OCT. 6 , 1852. 
Weather near London 
N 1851. 
Sun 
Sun 
Moon 
Moon’s 
Clock 
Barometer. (Thermo. Wind. Rain in In. 
Rises. 
Sets. 
11. & S. 
Age. 
bef. Sun. 
30 Th 
Autumn Green Carpet Moth seen. 
29.413 — 29.340, 62—46 
S. 
_, 
1 a. 6 
39 a. 5 
6 a 54 
17 
10 8 
1 F 
Arbutus flowers. 
29.290 — 29.012 GO—40 
s. 
35 
3 
36 
7 13 
18 
10 27 
2 S 
Horse Chestnut leaves fall. 
29.388 — 29.298' 58—45 
s. 
14 
5 
34 
7 35 
19 
10 46 
3SON 
17 Sunday ai'Ter Trinity. 
09.577 — 29.4(0, 61—49 
s. 
06 
6 
32 
8 2 
20 
1 1 0 
4 M 
Horse Chestnuts fall. 
29.485 —29.4621 64—43 
s.w. 
25 
8 
29 
8 37 
21 
11 23 
5 To 
Virginian Creeper red. 
29-748 — 29 . 57 II 61 — 43 
N.W. 
18 
9 
27 
9 19 
22 
11 41 
6 W 
Buntings flock. 
29-774 — 29.6771 61—40 
W. 
— 
11 
25 
10 13 
3X 
11 58 
Day of 
Year. 
274 
275 
276 
2 77 
278 
279 
280 
Meteorology of the Week. —At Chiswick, from observations during the last twenty-five years, the average highest and lowest tempera¬ 
tures of these days are 63.3° and 44.1° respectively. The greatest heat, 80°, occurred on the 5th in 1834 ; and the lowest cold, 23 , on the 5th 
in 1850. During the period 90 days were fine, and on 85 rain fell. __ 
BRITISH WILD FLOWERS. 
CROWFOOTS—RANUNCULACEiE. 
(Continued frontpage 377.) 
P1EONIA. PEONY. 
Generic Character. —Calyx below seed-vessel, of five 
roundish, concave, reflexed, unequal, permanent leaves. 
Petals five, roundish, concave, spreading, contracted at the 
base, larger than the calyx. Stamens very numerous; 
filaments hair-shaped, much shorter _ than the corolla. 
Anthers terminal, erect, oblong, four-sided, of four cells. 
Germens from two to five or more, stalkless, egg-shaped, 
downy. Styles none. Stigmas oblong, curved, compressed, 
blunt, coloured. Seed-vessels (follicles) as many as the 
germens, long egg-shaped, spreading widely, leathery, burst¬ 
ing along the inner side. Seeds numerous, oval, polished, 
ranged along the edges of the follicle. . . , 
PiEONiA corallina : Coral - coloured or Entire - leaved 
Description. — Boot composed of several oblong fleshy 
knobs, connected together by strings by which they are 
also attached to the stem. Stems about two feet high, 
cylindrical, unbranched, polished, reddish, leafy. Leaves 
twice three-leafleted; leaflets pointed - oval, usually un¬ 
divided, dark shining-green on upper side, but slightly 
hoary beneath. The uppermost leaf sometimes has only 
three leaflets. Flowers crowning the sterns, about four 
inches across, and composed of five or six large, roundish, 
crimson petals. Anthers yellow. Germens from two to five, 
joined at tlieir base, covered with white down and with 
purplish stigmas. Seed-vessels reddish, and polished inside. 
Seeds roundish, red at first, but changing to purple, and 
finally to black. , , ,, „ tT , ,,, 
Places where found .—Old Gerard, in his Heibal, sa J s 
“ The male Peony growetli wild upon a cony-berry (rabbit 
warren), in Betsome, being in the parish of Southfleet, in 
Kent, two miles from Gravesend, and in the ground some 
time belonging to a farmer there called Jolin Bradley. No 
other botanist has ever discovered it in the same place, but 
it was again introduced as a British AVild Flower, by Mr. F. 
B. AVright, in 1803, who found it growing wild in great pro 
fusion in the rocky clefts of the island called Steep Holmes, 
near the mouth of the river Severn. It is conjectured to 
have been there for ages, and two fishermen stated that 
they had gathered its flowers 00 or 70 years previously to 
Mr. AVright’s discovering it. 
Time of flowering. — May and June. 
History. —This is the Preonia mas, or Male Peony, of our 
old botanists, but both it and our common garden Pseony, 
which they called Peeonia feemina, or Female Peony, bear 
both stamens and pistils in the same flower, belonging to 
Polyandria Pentagynia of the Linn lean system. The genus 
Peeonia was so named by the ancients in honour of Paion , a 
physician, who cured the wounds received by the heathen 
gods during the Trojan war. From him physicians were 
sometimes called Pceonii, and the herbs employed lor 
medical purposes, Pwonitx herbec. The ancient writers, who 
transformed simple facts into fabulous histories, for the pui- 
pose of deifying favourite mortals, relate that Pffion, who 
was a pupil of the great iEsculapius, first received the 
Paiony on mount Olympus, from the hands of the mother 
of Apollo, with which lie cured Pluto of a wound he had 
received from Hercules; but this cure created so much 
jealousy in the breast of iEsculapius, that he secretly caused 
'the death of Pteon. Pluto, however, retaining a grateful 
sense of his service, changed him into the flower, which 
ever after bore his name. 
Old herbalists state that the roots are celebrated as re¬ 
medial in disorders of the head and nerves. They state 
that twelve grains of the dried root, if persevered in lor 
some time, are of great service in all nervous disorders, 
liead-aches, and convulsions ; prevent the recurrence of the 
night-mare, and remove obstructions in the liver. Mi 
Withering says:—“ Few aquatic excursions of a day can 
prove more interesting to the naturalist, especially the 
geologist, ornithologist, and botanist, than a sail from 
Bristol, through the romantic pass of St. Vincent’s rocks, 
to the Holmes Islands. The Steep Holmes represents the 
rugged truncated apex of a submarine mountain, whose 
abruptly precipitous sides are only accessible at one proper 
landing-place. Amidst the shelving rocks and loose shingly 
stones, a few hundred yards from, and at an elevation 
of nearly one hundred feet above, this spot, at the eastern 
end of the island, 
* There may ye see the Peony spread wide,’ ■ 
together with the scarcely less, rare Allium ampeloprasum, 
as the Editor had the gratification to behold in June, 1HU1. 
The latter plant has effected a lodgment below the light¬ 
house on the Flat Holmes, but the Peony is altogether 
peculiar to the sister island, and how far it may be deemed 
an aboriginal, strictly indigenous, or derived fortuitously 
from some wrecked Levanter, or possibly, though not 
probably, escaped from the little enclosure, whose ruinous 
walls and few remaining vestiges seem 
‘ To mark where a garden had been,’ 
must remain problematical, so far as our investigations ate 
concerned; no vessel having, been stranded within the 
memory of man, nor any inhabitant dwelt thereon, save t m 
No. COIN., Vol. VIII. 
