Silverweed.
Potentilla anserina.
—Rosaceæ.—
Small Bindweed.
Convolvulus arvensis.
—Convolvulaceæ.—
The Hooded Bindweed (C. sepium) is one of the most distinguished of our wild flowers, and it is almost impossible to see its large, pure white flowers ornamenting the hedge without desiring to acquire them. In general form it is like C. arvensis, but very much larger. Instead of being content to twine among low-growing herbs as that species, it climbs up the thickets to a height of 6 or 7 feet. In addition to the calyx this species has an enveloping pair of large inflated heart-shaped bracts—the “hood” of its popular name. The rootstock is thick and tuberous. Though it possesses honey it is not odorous, and appears to be, in consequence, but little visited by insects; it is, therefore, careless of the quality of its honey, and does not close its flowers in the rain, nor on moonlight nights, though it does so on dark nights. Sometimes the flowers are tinged or streaked with pink. Flowers June to August.
There is a third native species, the Seaside Convolvulus (C. soldanella), which does not twine, or but rarely. It has a long creeping rhizome, slender stems, and fleshy, kidney-shaped leaves. Its large rosy flowers are not numerous. There are two bracts, as in C. sepium, but they are smaller than the unequal sepals. It may frequently be found on sandy shores, and flowers from June to August.
The Greater Celandine (Chelidonium majus).
We have already described (page 6 ante) a plant bearing the name of Lesser Celandine, and we would at once warn the reader that the Greater Celandine is not even distantly related to the Lesser. Here is an illustration of the dangers that arise from dependence upon the folk-names of plants and animals. The novice would reasonably assume that the Lesser and the Greater Celandines differed only in point of size, whereas the resemblance that struck our forefathers appears to have consisted merely in both plants being in flower what time the swallow (Chelidon) returns to our shores. Chelidonium majus is really a kind of poppy, whilst Ranunculus ficaria is a buttercup.
There is only one British species of Chelidonium, a perennial plant, with erect branching stems. The true poppies have a milky juice: this plant, like the Welsh-poppy (Meconopsis), and the Horned-poppy (Glaucium) has a yellow juice. The leaf is much divided, the leaflets deeply lobed, with somewhat of a resemblance to an oak-leaf. The rather small yellow flowers are combined in umbels, borne on a long stalk, to be out of the way of the somewhat erect leaves. There are two sepals and four petals, as in Papaver, but the fruit, instead of being an urn-like capsule as in that genus, is a long pod with two valves, which separate from the base upwards.
It is a plant of the hedgerow and waste ground, where it may be found in flower from May to August. The yellow juice, which is very acrid and poisonous, had formerly a reputation as an eye medicine, and as a caustic for the burning away of warts.