A hardy evergreen, shrubby plant, the Common Rue ([page 11]) is well known as a medicinal plant. The leaves are nearly blue and emit a very unpleasant smell and have a bitter taste. Flowers are produced in late summer.
One of the most fragrant shrubs, the Mexican Orange-Flower ([page 12]), forms a large glossy-leaved bush with axillary stalks of white flowers which, from their appearance and fragrance, resemble orange-blossom. The flowers open in summer, and the leaves are bright-green, long-stalked, with three leaflets to each.
The Hop Tree or Shrubby Trefoil ([page 13]), flowers from May to July and produces flat-headed inflorescences of a greenish yellow colour, succeeded in autumn by bunches of flat fruits of a greenish colour. As the specific name suggests the leaves are in threes, long-stalked, of an elliptical shape, and terminate in a sharp point. Reaches a height of 8 feet.
Generally grown as a wall-plant, the Blue Mountain Sweet ([page 14]) flowers freely in that position during July and August. The alternate leaves are oblong, sharply-serrated, and downy. From the axils of the leaves spring the elongated spikes of pale blue flowers. A native of Mexico.
The Veitch’s Mountain Sweet ([page 15]) is another plant grown as a wall-shrub, where it often attains a height of 12 feet, and is a most conspicuous plant during its flowering period from May to July when it is literally covered by dense clusters of bright blue flowers relieved by neat, elliptical dark-green leaves.
Dyers’ Greenweed ([page 16]), so-called from the plant yielding a yellow dye, is found wild as a native plant in certain parts of Britain, and flowers most of the summer. The yellow flowers are produced on spicate racemes, while the leaves are alternate, smooth and spear-shaped. An erect-growing plant about two feet in height.
The Yellow Spanish Broom ([page 17]) is a plant which delights in a dry sandy loam, and is capable of resisting long periods of drought. This species is a hardy deciduous shrub with rush-like and nearly leafless branches, and attains a height of six feet. From July to September its spikes of fragrant golden-yellow blossoms are particularly attractive.
One of the European species, the Capitate Broom ([page 18]) forms a shrub over two feet high and opens its flowers from June onwards. The leaflets are egg-shaped, and the whole plant is covered with loose, soft hair.
Gerard’s Indigo ([page 19]), a native of India, is one of the most beautiful of the Leguminosæ shrubs and is a low branching species. Leaves pinnate and of a pale grey-green colour. Flowers open from July onwards and are borne in many-flowered spikes.
A native of Europe, the Bladder Senna ([page 20]) is one of the few plants that thrive in dry sandy soils. It forms a hardy, deciduous, free-growing shrub 10 feet high, bearing stalks of yellow pea-shaped flowers from July to September. The pinnate leaves are prettily divided into ovate and flat-shaped leaflets. A distinctive feature of this plant in the autumn is the large inflated seed-pods.