Regarding the honeysuckle, a naturalist in a London magazine wrote the other day as follows:—
“In the ordinary way, the branches grow out from the parent stem and twine round the first support they meet front right to left;”—the italics are mine—“but should they fail to find that support, two branches will mutually support each other, one twining from left to right, the other from right to left.”
Now the fact is that the honeysuckle twines from left to right, and if two or three branches are together, as we often find them, it is the weaker who twine round the stronger,—still from left to right.
The wild convolvulus, with its great white bell-like blossoms, that so often stars the hedgerows with a singular beauty, twines always to meet the sun.
The Vicia cracca, or purple climbing vetch, is an object of rare loveliness in July and August. It is a species of clustering-blossomed tare or sweet-pea, with neat, wee green leaves, and flowers of a bluish purple. It is not content with creeping up through the hedge, but it must go crawling along over the top to woo the sunshine.
Later on in summer and early autumn blooms the well-known bramble—the black-fruited rubus.
No poet, as far as I am aware, has yet celebrated the purple trailing vetch in song, but the bramble has not been forgotten.
Hear Elliott’s exquisite lines:—
“Though woodbines flaunt and roses glow
O’er all the fragrant bowers,
Thou needst not be ashamed to show
Thy satin-threaded flowers.
For dull the eye, the heart is dull,
That cannot feel how fair,
Amid all beauty, beautiful,
Thy tender blossoms are.
* * * * *.
“While silent showers are falling slow,
And ’mid the general hush,
A sweet air lifts the little bough,
Low whispering through the bush.
The primrose to the grave has gone;
The hawthorn flower is dead;
The violet by the moss’d grey stone
Hath laid her weary head;
But thou, wild bramble, back dost bring,
In all their beauteous power,
The fresh green days of life’s fair spring,
And boyhood’s blossoming hour.”
Nestling down by the hedgerow foot, among tall reeds and grey or brown seedling grasses, is many and many a charming wild flower, such as the stachys, the crimson ragged-robbin, with flowers like coral, and the snow-white silene.