34 
SHAKESPEARE’S GARDEN 
“ for garlands and crowns and to deck the garden/’ 
but it is open to doubt whether Gerard’s ragged- 
robin is not some other lychnis, and not owe Jios cuculi, 
which fades so rapidly it could never be suitable for 
garlands,, or, indeed, for decking a garden. “Nettles” 
in the text he tacitly assumes to .be the ordinary 
stinging-nettles, and favours the Orchis inascula and 
its allies for “ long purples.” 
It is generally assumed that the flowers are those 
of the meadow, and that a moist one. Why ? It is 
equally probable they are those of the shady hedge 
bank, and that the crow-flowers are the poisonous, 
rank Ranunculus replans , L., and its allies, that the 
nettles are the ordinary Urtica dioica, L., not neces¬ 
sarily in flower ; or if this be objected to on account 
of the stinging qualities, which the distraught 
Ophelia might not be insensible to, its place could 
be taken by the white dead-nettle ( Lamium album, L.). 
The daisies may be moon-daisies, and the long 
purples Arum maculatum, L., another plant of bane¬ 
ful influence, with its mysterious dead-white spadix, 
bearing no very far-fetched resemblance to a dead 
man’s finger wrapped in its green winding-sheet, and 
whose grosser name, the cuckoo-pint, is ready at 
hand. With this selection we have plants of the 
same situation flowering at the same time, and all 
more or less baneful in their attributes. 
