Wildflowers of the Farm

by Arthur O. Cooke

Besides choosing seed from the lightest or darkest blossoms, we should tend our plants very carefully and well, giving them plenty of good rich soil. This would make them grow bushy and with many flowers, as we see them in Mrs. Hammond's garden beds.
Many of our garden flowers have been produced in this way, by selecting and improving wild flowers. Of course all flowers grow wild somewhere; some in England, but many more in foreign countries, where the air is warmer and the soil richer and better. The Pansy is a little English wild flower with yellow, blue, and red petals. From this little flower gardeners have produced large and beautiful pansies of many different colours and shades of colours--white, yellow, blue, and brown. This has been done by careful selection, just as we spoke of doing with the wallflowers.
But if the large single-coloured pansies of which I have told you, or Mrs. Hammond's dark brown wallflowers, were allowed to seed themselves--that is, were allowed to drop and sow their own seed year after year--do you know what would happen? They would gradually revert or turn back to their original form and colour. The flowers would become mixed in colour and less fine in size; at last they would be simple wild flowers again.

Pansy

Now it is June, and the blossoms of the Wallflower have faded and fallen. The old wall is, however, growing gay with another plant--the Red Valerian. We must be careful to remember that it is the Red Valerian, for there are other valerians. There is the Great Valerian which does not grow on walls or rocks, but in damp and shady places; its flowers are pale pink.
The blossoms of the Red Valerian on the wall are bright crimson, and they grow in rows on small stems which spring from a stout stalk a foot or two in height. Each blossom of five petals forms a little tube or corolla. The base or foot of each little tube appears as a point on the under side of the flower stem; the Red Valerian, like the Violet, is a spurred flower.
The leaves are long and pointed, and they grow in pairs, on opposite sides of the stalk. Sometimes the edges of the leaves are quite smooth; sometimes they are serrated, or toothed, like the edge of a saw. If we pulled a plant of Red Valerian from the wall we should find the roots very long and branching; they need to be so, for the plant often grows on rocks and other places where it is exposed to wind. If the roots had not a firm hold the tall stems laden with blossoms might be blown down.
The Red Valerian flowers all through the summer. Its clusters of crimson flowers are as great an ornament to the old wall as were the wallflowers in May.
Now let us go down the steps into the foldyard; there is a wall on either side of us as we descend. The wall which faces the north is nearly always in shadow, and there are ferns growing but of it between the stones. One of these is a beautiful Hartstongue fern, with large and shining leaves. We said just now, however, that ferns have no flowers, so we will turn to something that grows on the wall opposite.
This is the ivy-leaved Toadflax. It grows on walls and rocks, as the Red Valerian does, but it is a very different plant in appearance. The stems of the Red Valerian are tall and upright; those of the Toadflax are slender and drooping. There is a large mass of it on the side of the wall, and we find that the root is at the highest point of the whole mass. The stems with the flowers and leaves hang down below the root; it is a trailing plant.

Ivy-Leaved Toadflax

There are, however, other roots clinging to the wall here and there below the main root. The plant, like several others, is able to throw out fresh roots from the joints of its stems, and these give it a firmer hold.
The flowers are small, and their colour is a pale lilac-blue with a bright yellow spot in the centre. These flowers too are spurred. The leaves are smooth and thick--what is called fleshy. They are divided into five lobes or divisions, and are not unlike an ivy-leaf in shape. When we turn a leaf or two over we see that the under side of some is dark purple.

This little plant is usually said to prefer a damp situation, and to blossom from May till October. This wall beside the steps is certainly rather damp, for the moisture from the garden above soaks down to it. In my own garden, however, the ivy-leaved Toadflax grows on some very dry old walls, and I have found it in flower in the middle of December.
Neither the Toadflax nor the Red Valerian are really natives of England. They were brought to our country many hundreds of years ago. They have spread so much that they have now become wildflowers. In the same way many others of our wild flowers were once unknown in England.
Now that we have come down the steps into the foldyard we see that it lies a good deal below the house and garden. Built round the foldyard are the stables for the cart-horses, the cowhouses, and the great barn. Behind the stables is the rickyard. That, like the garden, is above the foldyard; from it there are only two or three steps to the door of the loft or "tallet" above the stables. It is there that we will go now.
The wall of the tallet is of stone and is very old; the roof is tiled. There is a little hole cut in the bottom of the door, and you will see one like it in the door of the granary. It is made so that old Tib and the other cats can go in and catch mice. Growing between the stones of the wall just by the tallet door is the plant I want to show you now.

Common Stonecrop

It is the Stonecrop. Some of the stems grow upright, while others are trailing. At the top of each upright stem is a cluster of bright yellow flowers. Some of these are fully open, and we see that each blossom has five pointed petals. The trailing stems have no flowers at all, they are barren; but the leaves on the barren stems are much more numerous and closer together than those on the upright flowering stems.

These leaves are very curious. They are not flat like the leaves of the Red Valerian, the Toadflax, and most other flowers; they are very thick and fleshy--something like a short round pointed stick. They grow close against the stalk, not in pairs, but alternately, first a leaf on one side of the stalk, then a leaf on the other. They are erect too; that is, they point in the same direction as the stalk.
On the barren stems the leaves grow so closely that they quite cover the stalk. They have a hot sharp taste, and the plant is sometimes called "Wall-Pepper." The roots are very thin and can spread easily through narrow chinks of the wall.
We will see one more plant of the walls before we look for flowers elsewhere. Our next plant is not very common at Willow Farm; still I know where to look for it. Built against one side of the big barn in the foldyard is a little lean-to shed. Often there are calves in it; but just now we are more interested in something that is on the roof.
Standing close to the wall of the shed is a cattle crib--a kind of big square box or trough on legs, in which hay or chaff is put for the cattle. The shed is not very high, and by standing on the crib we can scramble on to the roof. Here is the plant we want to see.

House Leek