John Keble's Parishes

FLOWERS

TRAVELLER'S JOY (Clematis Vitalba).-Locally called Old Man's Beard, most appropriately, as its curling, silvery masses of seeds hang in wreaths over the hedges. There is a giant trunk growing up from the moat of Merdon Castle.

MEADOW RUE (Thalictrum flavum).-Handsome foliage and blossoms, showing much of anthers, growing on the banks of the Itchen canal.

WINDFLOWER (Anemone nemorosa).-Smellfoxes, as the villagers' children inelegantly term this elegant flower, spreading its pearl-white blossom, by means of its creeping root, all over the copses, and blushing purple as the season advances.

WATER CROWFOOT (Ranunculus aquatilis).-The white flowers, with yellow eyes, make quite a sheet over the ponds of Cranbury Common, etc. Ivy-leaved (R. hederaceus).-Not so frequent. The ivy-shaped leaves float above, the long fibrous ones go below. When there is lack of moisture, leaves and flower are sometimes so small that it has been supposed to be a different species. It was once in a stagnant pond in Boyatt Lane, but is extinct again.

BUTTERCUP or CROWFOOT-

(R. sceleratus) Highly-polished petals, which spangle

(R. acris) the fields and hedges with gold.

(R. repens) All much alike; all haunting

(R. bulbosus) kitchen-gardens and pastures, where the cattle, disliking their taste, leave the stems standing up alone.

SPEARWORT (R. flammula).-Flower like the others, but with narrow leaves.

GOLDILOCKS (R. auricomus).-More delicate, upper leaves spear-shaped, lower pinnate. In the borders of the copse wood of Otterbourne House.

CORN CROWFOOT (R. Ficaria).-Small, growing between the corn with hooked capsules.

SMALL CELANDINE (R. Bcaria).-The real buttercup of childhood, with its crown of numerous shining petals, making stars along the banks at the first breath of spring. One of the most welcome of flowers.

KING CUPS (Caltha palustris).-Large, gorgeous flowers, in every wet place, making a golden river in a dell at Cranbury.

GREEN HELLEBORE (Helleborus viridis).-Under an oak-tree, in a hedgerow leading from King's Lane, Standon, and in Hursley.

FUMITORY (Fumaria officinalis).-The pretty purple blossoms and graceful bluish foliage often spring up in gardens where they are treated as weeds.

YELLOW F. (F. lutea).-An old wall at Hursley.

CLIMBING F. (Corydalis claviculata).-Cuckoo bushes. Standon, and in Hursley.

COLUMBINE (Aquilegia vulgaris).-This group of purple doves, or of Turkish slippers, does not here merit the term vulgaris, though, wherever it occurs, it is too far from a garden to be a stray. Ampfield Wood, Lincoln's Copse, King's Lane, and Crabwood have each furnished a specimen.

BARBERRY (Berberis vulgaris).-This handsome shrub of yellow wood, delicate clusters of yellow flowers, and crimson fruit in long oval bunches has been sedulously banished from an idea that it poisons grass in its vicinity. There used to be a bush in Otterbourne House grounds, but it has disappeared, and only one now remains in the hedge of Pitt Downs.

POPPY (Papaver Rhæas).-Making neglected fields glorious with a crimson mantle, visible for miles in the sun.

GREATER CELANDINE (Chelidonium majus).-Yellow flowers, very frail, handsome pinnate leaf-lane at Brambridge, Standon, and in Hursley.