SHAKESPEARE’S GARDEN 
however, replaced, owing to its increasing scarcity, 
by the prickly gorse. 
A plant of the moor and wayside, of the river- 
bank and meadow, is the prickly thistle, which in 
its many forms is a striking, handsome plant, artistic 
in the fittest sense. Even in old Tusser’s days they 
were considered a sign of strong land, though of bad 
husbandry. Of the pretty feathered pappus. Coles 
(quoted by Ellacombe) says : “ If the down flyeth 
off coltsfoot, dandelyon or thistles when there is no 
winde, it is a signe of rain.” 
Twice the thistle is alluded to, once in Henry V., 
V. ii. 51 : 
And nothing teems 
But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burs ; 
and, again, Bottom commands Cobweb to 
Kill me a red-hipped humble-bee on the top of a thistle. 
Midsummer-Night's Dream , IV. i. io. 
The British thistles (Early English “ thistel,” from 
thydan, to stab), close allies of the burdocks, are 
contained in four genera : Carduus , the musk thistle ; 
Onions , spear thistles, which includes the plume and 
melancholy thistles; Onopordon , the cotton thistle ; 
and, the handsomest of all, Mariana lactea , Hill, the 
milk thistle, a plant with large dark-green, glossy 
leaves elegantly reticulated with white veins, and 
assigned to our Lady as one of her special flowers— 
hence St. Mary’s thistle. Its stems were formerly 
eaten. 
Speaking of this thistle reminds us of another 
Shakespearian plant, the holy thistle, Carduus Bene- 
dictus , L., a native of Southern Europe, and a sovereign 
specific with the herbalists, especially for the plague. 
Thomas Brasbridge (1578) wrote a treatise on its 
virtues, entitled: "'The Poore Man’s Jewell ; that is 
to say, a Treatise qn the Pestilence : unto which is 
