SHAKESPEARE’S GARDEN 
*53 
It is not generally known that the violet has a 
secondary* apetalous flower in the autumn, which 
produces most of the seed. This is not confined to 
the sweet violet, but to all Hooker’s section Nominium . 
The plant is still used in medicine, and acquired of late 
a notoriety as a suggested cancer cure, and in Shakes¬ 
peare’s time was eaten raw with onions and lettuces 
(“ History of Gardening,’’ Amherst, p. 59), and also 
mingled in broth and used to garnish dishes, while 
crystallized violets are not unknown in the present 
day. 
Daisies, too, may be found this month, although 
they are not in profusion until later on in the year, 
when they whiten the whole expanse of meadow- 
land, as it were, with frosted silver, awaiting the 
brand of the gilder in buttercup-time. Shakespeare 
mentions it five times in all, but the two best 
passages we have already quoted more than once, f 
We have left Lucrece, — 
Whose perfect white 
Show’d like an April daisy on the grass ; 
and Hamlet, IV. v. 183, Ophelia’s offering to her 
brother : 
You must wear your rue with a difference. There’s a 
daisy. 
The daisy {Beilis perennis, L.) belongs to a small 
genus of three or four species distributed in the 
temperate regions of the old and new world. Our 
own plant is confined to Europe. It belongs to the 
gigantic order Compositce. 
Y et another March flower in forward seasons is the 
daffodil {Narcissus pseudo-Narcissus, L.), the Lent-lily 
of the countryside, our principal representatives of 
* Dimorphic. 
t Love's Labour's Lost, V. ii. ; Hamlet, IV. vii. 
