SHAKESPEARE’S GARDEN 
IS 
with deep black basal spot. Its popular name is 
pheasant’s-eye, but whether it be the classical flower 
or not, the opinion of Linnaeus is worth quoting. 
On the other hand, Ellacombe quotes Golding’s 
translation of Ovid, 1567, and says that from it 
Shakespeare possibly obtained his information. The 
lines run : 
Of all one colour with the bloud, a flower she there did 
find, 
Even like the flower of that same tree, whose fruit in tender 
rind 
Have pleasant graines enclosede—howbeit the use of them is 
short, 
For why, the leaves do hang so loose through lightnesse in 
such sort 
As that the windes that all things pierce with everie little 
blast 
Do shake them off and shed them so as long they cannot 
last. 
This is all very well for the delicate white Anemone 
pulsatilla, our wind-flower par excellence ; but species 
such as A. coronaria and its allies are remarkably 
sturdy plants, and Prior may be correct in thinking 
the anemone of the Adonis legend the cistus. It 
is impossible to be certain one way or the other. 
If we turn from the flowers of garden and hedge 
bank to the forests of our land, we shall be able to 
consider two of our stateliest native trees, both of 
which, weather permitting, flower this month. The 
ash (Fraxinus excelsior , L.) is but once mentioned by 
the poet, and then in metaphor : 
O Martius, Martius ! 
Each word thou hast spoken hath weeded from my heart 
A root of ancient envy. . . . 
Let me twine 
Mine arms about that body, where against 
My grained ash a hundred times hath broke 
And scared the moon with splinters. 
Coriolanus , IV. v. 106, 
