_Chelidonium majus_
_Flowers_--Lustreless yellow, about 1/2 in. across, on slender pedicels,
in a small umbel-like cluster. Sepals 2, soon falling; 4 petals, many
yellow stamens, pistil prominent. _Stem:_ Weak, 1 to 2 ft. high,
branching, slightly hairy, containing bright orange acrid juice.
_Leaves:_ Thin, 4 to 8 in. long, deeply cleft into 5 (usually) irregular
oval lobes, the terminal one largest. _Fruit:_ Smooth, slender, erect
pods, 1 to 2 in. long, tipped with the persistent style.
_Preferred Habitat_--Dry waste land, fields, roadsides, gardens, near
dwellings.
_Flowering Season_--April-September.
_Distribution_--Naturalized from Europe in eastern United States.
Not this weak invader of our roadsides, whose four yellow petals suggest
one of the cross-bearing mustard tribe, but the pert little Lesser
Celandine, Pilewort, or Figwort Buttercup (_Ficaria Ficaria_), one of
the crowfoot family, whose larger solitary satiny yellow flowers so
commonly star European pastures, was Wordsworth’s special delight--a
tiny, turf-loving plant, about which much poetical association clusters.
Having stolen passage across the Atlantic, it is now making itself at
home about College Point, Long Island; on Staten Island; near
Philadelphia, and maybe elsewhere. Doubtless it will one day overrun our
fields, as so many other European immigrants have done.
The generic Greek name of the greater celandine, meaning a swallow, was
given it because it begins to bloom when the first returning swallows
are seen skimming over the water and freshly ploughed fields in a
perfect ecstasy of flight, and continues in flower among its erect seed
capsules until the first cool days of autumn kill the gnats and small
winged insects not driven to cover. Then the swallows, dependent on such
fare, must go to warmer climes where plenty still fly. Quaint old
Gerarde claims that the Swallow-wort was so called because “with this
herbe the dams restore eyesight to their young ones when their eye be
put out” by swallows. Coles asserts “the swallow cureth her dim eyes
with Celandine.”