One of our earliest spring flowers of the wood is the lovely Daffodil or Lent Lily (Narcissus Pseudo-narcissus) of the order Amaryllidaceæ. This plant develops from a bulb—an underground bud formed of thick, fleshy leaves; and the flowers appear during March and April. The perianth is composed of a tube and six spreading limbs of a delicate yellow colour; and a deep, bell-shaped, golden coronet, beautifully notched and curled at the rim.
The Daffodil.
During April and May we meet with the beautiful little Wood Anemone (Anemone nemorosa—order Ranunculaceæ), often in such abundance that the ground beneath the trees is completely covered by its graceful leaves and flowers. The leaves are radical, stalked, and deeply lobed, springing from an underground stem. On the flower stalk, some distance below the flower, is a whorl of stalked bracts of the same form as the radical leaves. The flower has six spreading sepals, resembling petals, usually white, but often tinged with a delicate pink, or, more rarely, with blue. The fruit consists of a number of downy achenes.
The Wood Anemone
Belonging to the same order (Ranunculaceæ) we have two species of Hellebore—the Green Hellebore (Helleborus viridis) and the Stinking Hellebore (H. fœtidus), both found in woods on chalk or limestone during April and May. The former, also known in parts as the Bear's-foot [Plate I], Fig. 1), has leaves palmately lobed, consisting of five or seven parts; and the flowers, which are more than an inch across, have spreading green sepals, and small tubular petals which contain nectar that is supposed to be poisonous on account of the small dead flies that are commonly found sticking to it. The Stinking Hellebore, or Setterwort, has evergreen, radical leaves, the lobes of which do not radiate from a common centre; and the flowers, of which there are many on each peduncle, have erect sepals.
The Goldilocks or Wood Ranunculus (Ranunculus auricomus) is a flower very much like the Upright Meadow Buttercup (p. [211]), though not nearly so tall, being only from six to ten inches high. It grows chiefly in thickets and copses, and flowers from April to July. Its root is fibrous; the stem erect, slender, and branched; the radical leaves long-stalked, round or kidney-shaped, divided into three, five, or seven lobes; and the stem leaves few, sessile, and palmately divided to the base into very narrow segments. The calyx is downy, consisting of spreading, yellow sepals; and the petals are often partially or entirely wanting. This plant is widely distributed, but is most frequent in the centre and south of England.
