The first flower I plucked in Britain was the daisy, in one of the parks
in Glasgow. The sward had recently been mown, but the daisies dotted it
as thickly as stars. It is a flower almost as common as the grass; find
a square foot of greensward anywhere, and you are pretty sure to find a
daisy, probably several of them. Bairnwort--child's flower--it is called
in some parts, and its expression is truly infantile. It is the favorite
of all the poets, and when one comes to see it he does not think it has
been a bit overpraised. Some flowers please us by their intrinsic beauty
of color and form; others by their expression of certain human
qualities: the daisy has a modest, lowly, unobtrusive look that is very
taking. A little white ring, its margin unevenly touched with crimson,
it looks up at one like the eye of a child.
"Thou unassuming Commonplace
Of Nature, with that homely face,
And yet with something of a grace,
Which Love makes for thee!"
Not a little of its charm to an American is the unexpected contrast it
presents with the rank, coarse ox-eye daisy so common in this country,
and more or less abundant in Britain, too. The Scotch call this latter
"dog daisy." I thought it even coarser, and taller there than with us.
Though the commonest of weeds, the "wee, modest, crimson-tippit flower"
sticks close at home; it seems to have none of the wandering,
devil-may-care, vagabond propensities of so many other weeds. I believe
it has never yet appeared upon our shores in a wild state, though
Wordsworth addressed it thus:--
"Thou wander'st this wild world about
Unchecked by pride or scrupulous doubt."
The daisy is prettier in the bud than in the flower, as it then shows
more crimson. It shuts up on the approach of foul weather; hence
Tennyson says the daisy closes
"Her crimson fringes to the shower."
At Alloway, whither I flitted from Glasgow, I first put my hand into the
British nettle, and, I may add, took it out again as quickly as if I had
put it into the fire. I little suspected that rank dark-green weed there
amid the grass under the old apple-trees, where the blue speedwell and
cockscombs grew, to be a nettle. But I soon learned that the one plant
you can count on everywhere in England and Scotland is the nettle. It is
the royal weed of Britain. It stands guard along every road-bank and
hedge-row in the island.
Put your hand to the ground after dark in any fence corner, or under any
hedge, or on the border of any field, and the chances are ten to one you
will take it back again with surprising alacrity. And such a villainous
fang as the plant has! it is like the sting of bees. Your hand burns and
smarts for hours afterward. My little boy and I were eagerly gathering
wild flowers on the banks of the Doon, when I heard him scream, a few
yards from me. I had that moment jerked my stinging hand out of the
grass as if I had put it into a hornet's nest, and I knew what the
youngster had found. We held our burning fingers in the water, which
only aggravated the poison. It is a dark green, rankly growing plant,
from one to two feet high, that asks no leave of anybody. It is the
police that protects every flower in the hedge. To "pluck the flower of
safety from the nettle danger" is a figure of speech that has especial
force in this island. The species of our own nettle with which I am best
acquainted, the large-leaved Canada nettle, grows in the woods, is shy
and delicate, is cropped by cattle, and its sting is mild. But
apparently no cow's tongue can stand the British nettle, though, when
cured as hay, it is said to make good fodder. Even the pigs cannot eat
it till it is boiled. In starvation times it is extensively used as a
pot-herb, and, when dried, its fibre is said to be nearly equal to that
of flax. Rough handling, I am told, disarms it, but I could not summon
up courage to try the experiment. Ophelia made her garlands
"Of crow-flowers, daisies, nettles, and long purples."
But the nettle here referred to was probably the stingless dead-nettle.
A Scotch farmer, with whom I became acquainted, took me on a Sunday
afternoon stroll through his fields. I went to his kirk in the forenoon;
in the afternoon he and his son went to mine, and liked the sermon as
well as I did. These banks and braes of Doon, of a bright day in May,
are eloquent enough for anybody. Our path led along the river course for
some distance. The globe-flower, like a large buttercup with the petals
partly closed, nodded here and there. On a broad, sloping, semi-circular
bank, where a level expanse of rich fields dropped down to a springy,
rushy bottom near the river's edge, and which the Scotch call a brae, we
reclined upon the grass and listened to the birds, all but the lark new
to me, and discussed the flowers growing about. In a wet place the
"gillyflower" was growing, suggesting our dentaria, or crinkle-root.
This is said to be "the lady's smock all silver-white" of Shakespeare,
but these were not white, rather a pale lilac. Near by, upon the ground,
was the nest of the meadow pipit, a species of titlark, which my friend
would have me believe was the wood-lark,--a bird I was on the lookout
for. The nest contained six brown-speckled eggs,--a large number, I
thought. But I found that this is the country in which to see
birds'-nests crowded with eggs, as well as human habitations thronged
with children. A white umbelliferous plant, very much like wild carrot,
dotted the turf here and there. This, my companion said, was pig-nut, or
ground-chestnut, and that there was a sweet, edible tuber at the root
of it, and, to make his words good, dug up one with his fingers,
recalling Caliban's words in the "Tempest":--
"And I, with my long nails, will dig thee pig-nuts."
The plant grows freely about England, but does not seem to be
troublesome as a weed.
In a wooded slope beyond the brae, I plucked my first woodruff, a little
cluster of pure white flowers, much like that of our saxifrage, with a
delicate perfume. Its stalk has a whorl of leaves like the galium. As
the plant dries its perfume increases, and a handful of it will scent a
room.
The wild hyacinths, or bluebells, had begun to fade, but a few could yet
be gathered here and there in the woods and in the edges of the fields.
This is one of the plants of which nature is very prodigal in Britain.
In places it makes the underwoods as blue as the sky, and its rank
perfume loads the air. Tennyson speaks of "sheets of hyacinths." We have
no wood flower in the Eastern States that grows in such profusion.
Our flowers, like our birds and wild creatures, are more shy and
retiring than the British. They keep more to the woods, and are not
sowed so broadcast. Herb Robert is exclusively a wood plant with us, but
in England it strays quite out into the open fields and by the roadside.
Indeed, in England I found no so-called wood flower that could not be
met with more or less in the fields and along the hedges. The main
reason, perhaps, is that the need of shelter is never so great there,
neither winter nor summer, as it is here, and the supply of moisture is
more uniform and abundant. In dampness, coolness, and shadiness, the
whole climate is woodsy, while the atmosphere of the woods themselves is
almost subterranean in its dankness and chilliness. The plants come out
for sun and warmth, and every seed they scatter in this moist and
fruitful soil takes.
How many exclusive wood flowers we have, most of our choicest kinds
being of sylvan birth,--flowers that seem to vanish before the mere
breath of cultivated fields, as wild as the partridge and the beaver,
like the yellow violet, the arbutus, the medeola, the dicentra, the
claytonia, the trilliums, many of the orchids, uvularia, dalibarda, and
others. In England, probably, all these plants, if they grew there,
would come out into the fields and opens. The wild strawberry, however,
reverses this rule; it is more a wood plant in England than with us.
Excepting the rarer variety (_Fragaria vesca_), our strawberry thrives
best in cultivated fields, and Shakespeare's reference to this fruit
would not be apt,--
"The strawberry grows underneath the nettle;
And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best,
Neighbor'd by fruit of baser quality."
The British strawberry is found exclusively, I believe, in woods and
copses, and the ripened fruit is smaller or lighter colored than our
own.
Nature in this island is less versatile than with us, but more constant
and uniform, less variety and contrast in her works, and less
capriciousness and reservation also. She is chary of new species, but
multiplies the old ones endlessly. I did not observe so many varieties
of wild flowers as at home, but a great profusion of specimens; her lap
is fuller, but the kinds are fewer. Where you find one of a kind, you
will find ten thousand. Wordsworth saw "golden daffodils,"
"Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,"
and one sees nearly all the common wild flowers in the same profusion.
The buttercup, the dandelion, the ox-eye daisy, and other field flowers
that have come to us from Europe, are samples of how lavishly Nature
bestows her floral gifts upon the Old World. In July the scarlet poppies
are thickly sprinkled over nearly every wheat and oat field in the
kingdom. The green waving grain seems to have been spattered with blood.
Other flowers were alike universal. Not a plant but seems to have sown
itself from one end of the island to the other. Never before did I see
so much white clover. From the first to the last of July, the fields in
Scotland and England were white with it. Every square inch of ground had
its clover blossom. Such a harvest as there was for the honey-bee,
unless the nectar was too much diluted with water in this rainy climate,
which was probably the case. In traveling south from Scotland, the
foxglove traveled as fast as I did, and I found it just as abundant in
the southern counties as in the northern. This is the most beautiful
and conspicuous of all the wild flowers I saw,--a spire of large purple
bells rising above the ferns and copses and along the hedges everywhere.
Among the copses of Surrey and Hants, I saw it five feet high, and amid
the rocks of North Wales still higher. We have no conspicuous wild
flower that compares with it. It is so showy and abundant that the
traveler on the express train cannot miss it; while the pedestrian finds
it lining his way like rows of torches. The bloom creeps up the stalk
gradually as the season advances, taking from a month to six weeks to go
from the bottom to the top, making at all times a most pleasing
gradation of color, and showing the plant each day with new flowers and
a fresh, new look. It never looks shabby and spent, from first to last.
The lower buds open the first week in June, and slowly the purple wave
creeps upward; bell after bell swings to the bee and moth, till the end
of July, when you see the stalk waving in the wind with two or three
flowers at the top, as perfect and vivid as those that opened first. I
wonder the poets have not mentioned it oftener. Tennyson speaks of "the
foxglove spire." I note this allusion in Keats:--
"Where the deer's swift leap
Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell,"
and this from Coleridge:--
"The fox-glove tall
Sheds its loose purple bells or in the gust,
Or when it bends beneath the upspringing lark,
Or mountain finch alighting."
Coleridge perhaps knew that the lark did not perch upon the stalk of the
foxglove, or upon any other stalk or branch, being entirely a ground
bird and not a percher, but he would seem to imply that it did, in these
lines.
A London correspondent calls my attention to these lines from
Wordsworth,--
"Bees that soar
High as the highest peak of Furness Fells,
Yet murmur by the hour in foxglove bells;"
and adds: "Less poetical, but as graphic, was a Devonshire woman's
comparison of a dull preacher to a 'Drummle drane in a pop;' Anglicè, A
drone in a foxglove,--called a pop from children amusing themselves with
popping its bells."
The prettiest of all humble roadside flowers I saw was the little blue
speedwell. I was seldom out of sight of it anywhere in my walks till
near the end of June; while its little bands and assemblages of deep
blue flowers in the grass by the roadside, turning a host of infantile
faces up to the sun, often made me pause and admire. It is prettier than
the violet, and larger and deeper colored than our houstonia. It is a
small and delicate edition of our hepatica, done in indigo blue and
wonted to the grass in the fields and by the waysides.
"The little speedwell's darling blue,"
sings Tennyson. I saw it blooming, with the daisy and the buttercup,
upon the grave of Carlyle. The tender human and poetic element of this
stern rocky nature was well expressed by it.
In the Lake district I saw meadows purple with a species of wild
geranium, probably _Geranium pratense_. It answered well to our wild
geranium, which in May sometimes covers wettish meadows in the same
manner, except that this English species was of a dark blue purple.
Prunella, I noticed, was of a much deeper purple there than at home. The
purple orchids also were stronger colored, but less graceful and
pleasing, than our own. One species which I noticed in June, with habits
similar to our purple fringed-orchis, perhaps the pyramidal orchis, had
quite a coarse, plebeian look. Probably the most striking blue and
purple wild flowers we have are of European origin, as succory,
blue-weed or bugloss, vervain, purple loosestrife, and harebell. These
colors, except with the fall asters and gentians, seem rather unstable
in our flora.
It has been observed by the Norwegian botanist Schübeler that plants and
trees in the higher latitudes have larger leaves and larger flowers than
farther south, and that many flowers which are white in the south become
violet in the far north. This agrees with my own observation. The
feebler light necessitates more leaf surface, and the fewer insects
necessitate larger and more showy flowers to attract them and secure
cross-fertilization. Blackberry blossoms, so white with us, are a
decided pink in England. The same is true of the water-plantain. Our
houstonia and hepatica would probably become a deep blue in that
country. The marine climate probably has something to do also with this
high color of the British flowers, as I have noticed that on our New
England coast the same flowers are deeper tinted than they are in the
interior.
A flower which greets all ramblers to moist fields and tranquil
watercourses in midsummer is the meadow-sweet, called also queen of the
meadows. It belongs to the Spiræa tribe, where our hardhack, nine-bark,
meadow-sweet, queen of the prairie, and others belong, but surpasses all
our species in being sweet-scented,--a suggestion of almonds and
cinnamon. I saw much of it about Stratford, and in rowing on the Avon
plucked its large clusters of fine, creamy white flowers from my boat.
Arnold is felicitous in describing it as the "blond meadow-sweet."
They cultivate a species of clover in England that gives a striking
effect to a field when in bloom, _Trifolium incarnatum_, the long heads
as red as blood. It is grown mostly for green fodder. I saw not one
spear of timothy grass in all my rambles. Though this is a grass of
European origin, yet it seems to be quite unknown among English and
Scotch farmers. The horse bean, or Winchester bean, sown broadcast, is a
new feature, while its perfume, suggesting that of apple orchards, is
the most agreeable to be met with.
I was delighted with the furze, or whin, as the Scotch call it, with its
multitude of rich yellow, pea-like blossoms exhaling a perfume that
reminded me of mingled cocoanut and peaches. It is a prickly,
disagreeable shrub to the touch, like our ground juniper. It seems to
mark everywhere the line of cultivation; where the furze begins the plow
stops. It covers heaths and commons, and, with the heather, gives that
dark hue to the Scotch and English uplands. The heather I did not see in
all its glory. It was just coming into bloom when I left, the last of
July; but the glimpses I had of it in North Wales, and again in northern
Ireland, were most pleasing. It gave a purple border or fringe to the
dark rocks (the rocks are never so lightly tinted in this island as ours
are) that was very rich and striking. The heather vies with the grass in
its extent and uniformity. Until midsummer it covers the moors and
uplands as with a dark brown coat. When it blooms, this coat becomes a
royal robe. The flower yields honey to the bee, and the plant shelter to
the birds and game, and is used by the cottagers for thatching, and for
twisting into ropes, and for various other purposes.
Several troublesome weeds I noticed in England that have not yet made
their appearance in this country. Coltsfoot invests the plowed lands
there, sending up its broad fuzzy leaves as soon as the grain is up, and
covering large areas. It is found in this country, but, so far as I have
observed, only in out-of-the-way places.
Sheep sorrel has come to us from over seas, and reddens many a poor
worn-out field; but the larger species of sorrel, _Rumex acetosa_, so
common in English fields, and shooting up a stem two feet high, was
quite new to me. Nearly all the related species, the various docks, are
naturalized upon our shores.
On the whole the place to see European weeds is in America. They run
riot here. They are like boys out of school, leaping all bounds. They
have the freedom of the whole broad land, and are allowed to take
possession in a way that would astonish a British farmer. The Scotch
thistle is much rarer in Scotland than in New York or Massachusetts. I
saw only one mullein by the roadside, and that was in Wales, though it
flourishes here and there throughout the island. The London
correspondent, already quoted, says of the mullein: "One will come up in
solitary glory, but, though it bears hundreds of flowers, many years
will elapse before another is seen in the same neighborhood. We used to
say, 'There is a mullein coming up in such a place,' much as if we had
seen a comet; and its flannel-like leaves and the growth of its spike
were duly watched and reported on day by day." I did not catch a glimpse
of blue-weed, Bouncing Bet, elecampane, live-for-ever, bladder campion,
and others, of which I see acres at home, though all these weeds do grow
there. They hunt the weeds mercilessly; they have no room for them. You
see men and boys, women and girls, in the meadows and pastures cutting
them out. A species of wild mustard infests the best grain lands in
June; when in bloom it gives to the oat-fields a fresh canary yellow.
Then men and boys walk carefully through the drilled grain and pull the
mustard out, and carry it away, leaving not one blossom visible.
On the whole, I should say that the British wild flowers were less
beautiful than our own, but more abundant and noticeable, and more
closely associated with the country life of the people; just as their
birds are more familiar, abundant, and vociferous than our songsters,
but not so sweet-voiced and plaintively melodious. An agreeable
coarseness and robustness characterize most of their flowers, and they
more than make up in abundance where they lack in grace.
The surprising delicacy of our first spring flowers, of the hepatica,
the spring beauty, the arbutus, the bloodroot, the rue-anemone, the
dicentra,--a beauty and delicacy that pertains to exclusive wood
forms,--contrasts with the more hardy, hairy, hedge-row look of their
firstlings of the spring, like the primrose, the hyacinth, the wood
spurge, the green hellebore, the hedge garlic, the moschatel, the
daffodil, the celandine, and others. Most of these flowers take one by
their multitude; the primrose covers broad hedge banks for miles as with
a carpet of bloom. In my excursions into field and forest I saw nothing
of the intense brilliancy of our cardinal flower, which almost baffles
the eye; nothing with the wild grace of our meadow or mountain lilies;
no wood flower so taking to the eye as our painted trillium and
lady's-slipper; no bog flower that compares with our calopogon and
arethusa, so common in southeastern New England; no brookside flower
that equals our jewel-weed; no rock flower before which one would pause
with the same feeling of admiration as before our columbine; no violet
as striking as our bird's-foot violet; no trailing flower that
approaches our matchless arbutus; no fern as delicate as our
maiden-hair; no flowering shrub as sweet as our azaleas. In fact, their
flora presented a commoner type of beauty, very comely and pleasing, but
not so exquisite and surprising as our own. The contrast is well shown
in the flowering of the maples of the two countries,--that of the
European species being stiff and coarse compared with the fringe-like
grace and delicacy of our maple. In like manner the silken tresses of
our white pine contrast strongly with the coarser foliage of the
European pines. But what they have, they have in greatest profusion. Few
of their flowers waste their sweetness on the desert air; they throng
the fields, lanes, and highways, and are known and seen of all. They
bloom on the housetops, and wave from the summits of castle walls. The
spring meadows are carpeted with flowers, and the midsummer
grain-fields, from one end of the kingdom to the other, are spotted with
fire and gold in the scarlet poppies and corn marigolds.
I plucked but one white pond-lily, and that was in the Kew Gardens,
where I suppose the plucking was trespassing. Its petals were slightly
blunter than ours, and it had no perfume. Indeed, in the matter of
sweet-scented flowers, our flora shows by far the more varieties, the
British flora seeming richer in this respect by reason of the abundance
of specimens of any given kind.
It is, indeed, a flowery land; a kind of perpetual spring-time reigns
there, a perennial freshness and bloom such as our fierce skies do not
permit.