IN "ASHMEAD"
There are many other flowers besides the Clover in Ashmead to-day, and
this afternoon we will look at some that grow among the grass. One of
these you may perhaps call a weed, yet it is one of the most beautiful
wild flowers in England. I mean the golden Dandelion.
On a lawn or in a garden bed it would certainly be a weed, and a very
troublesome one. Here among the grass we need only think of it as a very
lovely flower. See what a rich golden yellow the little florets of the
blossom are. Plants like the Dandelion, in which the blossom is composed
of a number of florets, are called "composite" plants.
If we examine the plant closely we shall find that each stalk which
bears a blossom, and each long deeply indented leaf, grows, like the
flower-stem and leaf of the Primrose, from a very short underground
stem. It is from the indented leaves that the Dandelion gets its name.
The leaves have something the appearance of the teeth of a lion. Now
the French name for lion's tooth is _dent de lion_, and we English have
corrupted this into _dandelion._
Each flower-stem is round and, when we pull one, we see that it is a
hollow tube. We bite a piece of the stalk as we did with the Clover
blossom. What a difference! The Clover was quite sweet, but the
Dandelion is very bitter. You may not like the taste perhaps, but the
white milky-looking juice is quite wholesome. Dandelion tea and
Dandelion beer are often made by country people, and the leaves give a
pleasant flavour to a salad.
Shall we pull up a plant and examine the root? I am afraid we cannot,
unless you care to go back to the house for a fork or a trowel. The
Dandelion has a very long strong root--tap-root--which goes deep into
the ground; and there is no tall main stem of which we can take
hold--the leaves and flower stalks only break off in our hands.
Here is a stalk from which the flower has fallen, leaving only the seed.
Of what does it remind you? Of the Traveller's Joy in autumn? Yes; the
Dandelion has what is called a "pappus" attached to its seed, rather
similar to the feathery tail of the Traveller's Joy. This makes the
Dandelion a troublesome weed; the seeds are easily carried by the wind
and, if a patch of dandelions is allowed to go to seed, it will produce
fresh plants quite far away. Before the seeds are scattered each head is
like a round white fluffy ball.
Here are daisies, with their dainty white florets often tinged with
pink. In the centre of each blossom is a yellow spot. Every night the
white florets fold up over the yellow centre, and do not open until the
morning. This fact explains to us the Daisy's name; it is the Day's Eye
which opens at dawn and shuts at night.
The Daisy is a little flower which everyone knows and loves, yet in the
wrong place it is a weed. It is a perennial and it spreads very fast. Of
course both perennials and annuals spread by means of their seed, but
perennials also spread in other ways as well. We will see how the Daisy
does this.
There; with my pocket knife I have easily dug up a plant. The root is
small and compact, not long like that of the Dandelion. But, when I try
to lift the Daisy plant from the grass, I find that it is still held
down by a stout tough thread branching from the root. This thread is
connected with another Daisy plant; from that one there is another
thread connected with a third plant. When we have at last got our plant
clear away from the ground, three more are hanging to it by these
threads.
That is how the Daisy spreads; it throws out these thread-like shoots
from the root, and from these grow another root and plant. I knew only
too well what we should find; there are far too many daisies in my lawn
at home, and I found out long ago the way in which they spread so fast.
If daisies are allowed to increase in this way they form large clumps
which smother and kill the grass. We notice that each flower-stem and
each leaf of the Daisy springs from a very short underground stem, as
those of the Dandelion do.
Daisies and dandelions are plentiful in Ashmead, and so are the yellow
buttercups. There are, however, not quite so many buttercups as you
might think at first. The real name of what we call the Buttercup is the
Bulbous Crowfoot, and there is also a Meadow Crowfoot in the field. A
third crowfoot is the Corn Crowfoot. To-day we will notice one or two
differences between the two plants we see here.
[Illustration: BULBOUS CROWFOOT.]
The blossoms of both plants have five smooth shining yellow petals.
We see, however, that those of the Bulbous Crowfoot or Buttercup form
a real cup, while the petals of the Meadow Crowfoot spread out almost
flat. The Meadow Crowfoot grows two or three feet high; the Buttercup
is a shorter plant.
The flowers are pretty, but that, I am afraid, is all that we can
say for either of these plants. They are both of them bitter and
unwholesome, and horses and cattle avoid eating them. Some people even
say that to carry a bunch of the stems will make the hands sore; so I
think that we will only look at and admire the flowers where they grow.
The Cowslip is a very different plant indeed and we will not call it a
weed. Even Mr. Hammond is not sorry to see it here; for he is fond of a
glass of the sweet cowslip wine which Mrs. Hammond will make if we busy
ourselves and take home some large basketfuls of the drooping blossoms.
Before we set to work, however, let us examine the plant.
Looking at a stalk of Cowslip blossoms we see something peculiar about
it at once--something unlike the other flowers we have seen. Six or
seven drooping blossoms grow from the stalk we have picked, and they
all grow from the very top of the stalk. The point at the top of the
stalk from which the blossoms grow is called the "umbel."
Each blossom has five yellow petals joined together to form a corolla.
In the centre of the blossom, where these petals meet, each is marked
with a spot of deep orange-red colour. The yellow petals are
comparatively small, and peep out of a long pale green sheath called
the "calyx."
Surely we have seen a flower like this before--the Primrose in the
little coppice. Yes; the Primrose had five pale yellow petals, rather
larger than those of the Cowslip, and joined together to form a corolla;
they grew out of a long green calyx. Also each petal had a spot of
darker yellow in the centre of the blossom. The leaves of both the
Primrose and the Cowslip are much wrinkled, and they grow from a short
underground stem.
But, you say, each Primrose blossom grew alone on the top of a long
stem. Yes, but if we had dug up a Primrose plant, we should have found
that several flower stems grew from the same point--the top of a very
short stem which hardly appeared above the ground. They grew from an
umbel, and the Primrose is closely related to the Cowslip. The
difference is that the blossoms of the Primrose grow on _long_ stems
from a _short_-stemmed umbel. Those of the Cowslip grow on _short_ stems
from a _long_-stemmed umbel.