SHAKESPEARE’S GARDEN 
3i 
flower, though not, of course, rated with crown 
imperial. The force of Ellacombe’s objection to 
calling Shakespeare’s plant oxlip lies in which way 
we read the adjectives. The oxlip is the Verbascum 
non-odoratum of Fuchsius. Nothing seems known of 
the derivation of the name. 
One of the showiest plants of our cottage gardens, 
and of those fortunate woods in which it is a native, 
is the curious columbine, or dove plant ( Aquilegia 
vulgaris , L.), one of the members of the great order 
Ranunculaceas ), bearing little superficial resemblance 
to the typical plants of that group, owing to the 
irregularities of its corolla. It is a widely-spread 
plant, found in Europe, Morocco, the Canaries, and 
Asia, to the Western Himalaya. Under cultivation 
it has assumed an infinite variety of form and colour, 
some of the shapes and tints being as beautiful as 
those of irids or orchids; but in a state of nature it 
is only found with blue or purple flowers. Twice the 
plant is named in the plays—once in Loves Labour s 
Lost, V. ii. 663 , and, again, in Hainlet, IV. v. 180 : 
There’s fennel for you and columbines. 
Of our seven native fumitories, but one is referred 
to by the poet, Fumaria officinalis, L., a plant so 
delicate in foliage, with such slender bright pink 
flowers, that it seems at first as though the epithet 
“ rank ” twice applied to it ( King Lear, IV. iv. 3, and 
Henry V., V. ii. 45) were incorrect ; and yet it has a 
decidedly rank method of spreading itself over the 
surface of cultivated ground, and is not alone a 
trouble to the cultivator, but injurious to the crop. 
The name is said to be derived from the French 
fume-terre, Latin fumus terras — i.e., earth smoke—- 
from the belief that it sprang without seed, spon¬ 
taneously engendered by vapours rising from the 
earth, which legend is credited not only by Peter 
