HIS graceful plant belongs to the fumitory family, of which we have many cultivated varieties in Britain and elsewhere. Here our lovely flower grows wild in rich black mould in the forest, and in recently cleared spots within its protecting shadow, where its drooping bells and rich scent have gained for it the not very inappropriate name of “Wild Hyacinth.” The common name of “Squirrel-Corn” is derived from the round orange tubers at the roots, resembling in size and colour grains of Indian-Corn, and from their being a favourite food with the ground squirrel.
The blossoms are of a pellucid whiteness, sometimes tinged with reddish lilac; they form a drooping raceme on a round smooth scape, springing from a scaly bud; the corolla is heart-shaped, composed of four petals, in two pairs, flattened and sac-like, the tips united over the stigma, and slightly projecting; in D. cucullaria assuming the likeness of the head of a fly, the cream-coloured diverging petals presenting a strong resemblance to the deer-fly of our lakes. This very charming species is known by the somewhat vulgar name of “Breeches Flower” and “Dutchman’s Breeches.” A more descriptive name would be “Fly-Flower.”
All the species flourish under cultivation, and become very ornamental early border flowers; but care should be taken to plant them in rich black vegetable mould, the native soil of their forest haunts.
Our artist has chosen the delicate rosy-tinted variety as the subject of the right hand flower of the plate.
PURPLE TRILLIUM.
(DEATH-FLOWER.—BIRTH-ROOT.)
Trillium erectum.
“Bring flowers, bring flowers o’er the bier to shed
A crown for the brow of the early dead.
Though they smile in vain for what once was ours,