The Call of the Wildflower Part 8

FELONS AND OUTLAWS

The poisoning henbane, and the mandrake dread.

DRAYTON.

THAT there are felonious as well as philanthropic flowers, plants that are actively malignant in their relation to mankind, has always been a popular belief. The upas-tree, for example, has given rise to many gruesome stories; and the mandrake, fabled to shriek when torn from the ground, has played a frequent part in poetry and legend; not to mention the host of noxious weeds, the "plants at whose names the verse feels loath," as Sh.e.l.ley has it:

And thistles, and nettles, and darnels rank, And the dock, and henbane, and hemlock dank.

The felons, however, of whom I would now speak are not the plants that seem merely foul and repulsive, such as the docks and nettles, the broom-rapes, toothworts, and similar ill-looking parasites, but rather the bold bad outlaws and highwaymen, the "gentlemen of the road," who, however deleterious to human welfare, have a sinister beauty and distinction of their own, and are thus able to fascinate us. Prominent among these is the clan of the nightshades, to which the mandrake itself belongs, and which has several well-known representatives among British flowers; above all, the deadly nightshade, or dwale, as it is better named, to distinguish it from smaller relatives that are wrongly described as "the deadly." So poisonous is the dwale that Gerarde three centuries ago exhorted his readers to "banish these pernicious plants out of your gardens, and all places near to your houses, where children do resort;" and modern writers tell us that the plant is "fortunately"

of rare occurrence. But threatened plants, like threatened men, live long; and the dwale, though very local, may still be found in some abundance: there are woods where it grows even in profusion, and, _pace_ Gerarde, rejoices the heart of the flower-lover, for in truth it has a strange and ominous charm, this ma.s.sive grave-looking plant with the large oval leaves, heavy sombre purple blossoms, and big black "wolf-cherries."[16]

[Footnote 16: Rabbits eat the leaves without harm to themselves, but their flesh becomes injurious to human beings. A case of poisoning of this sort was lately reported from Oxted.]

Next to the dwale in the nightshade family must rank the henbane, a fallen angel among wildflowers; for its beauty is of the sickly and fetid kind, which at once attracts and repels. It is curious that in the lines from Sh.e.l.ley's "Sensitive Plant" the epithet "dank" should be given to the hemlock, to which it is quite unsuited, rather than to the henbane, where its appropriateness could not be questioned; for the stalk, leaves, and flowers of the henbane are alike clammy to the touch.

Presumably this uncertain and sporadic herb has become rarer of late years; for whereas it is frequently stated in books to be "common in waste places," one may visit hundreds of waste places without a glimpse of it. In the _Flora of the Lake District_ (1885) Arnside is given as one of its localities; but I was told by a resident that he had only once seen it there, and then it had sprung up in his garden.

It is in similar places that the thorn-apple, another cousin to the nightshade, is apt to make its un-invited appearance; less a felon, perhaps, than a st.u.r.dy rogue and vagabond among flowers of ill repute. A year or two ago, I was told by the holder of an allotment-garden that a great number of thorn-apples were springing up in his ground; and knowing my interest in flowers he sent me a small basketful of the young plants, which, rather to my neighbours' surprise, I set out in a row, like lettuces, in a corner of my back-yard. There they flourished well, and in due course made a fine show with their trumpet-shaped white flowers and the big th.o.r.n.y capsules whence the plant takes its name. It is not a bad-looking fellow, but awkward and hulking, and quite devoid of the sickly grace of the henbane or of the bodeful gloom of the dwale.

Pa.s.sing now to the handsome but acrid tribe of the _ranunculi_, and omitting the poisonous but interesting baneberry, of which I have already spoken, we come to two formidable plants, the h.e.l.lebore and the monk's-hood, which have been famous from earliest times for their dangerous propensities. The green h.e.l.lebore, though in Westmorland named "felon gra.s.s," is a less felonious-looking flower than its close kinsman the fetid h.e.l.lebore, whose general appearance, owing to the crude pale green of its purple-tipped sepals, and the reluctance of its globe-like buds to expand themselves fully, is one of insalubrity and unripeness.

But it is a plant of distinction, some two or three feet in height; and as it flowers before the winter is well past, it can hardly fail to arrest attention in the few places where it is to be found: in Arundel Park, in Suss.e.x, it may be seen growing in close conjunction with the deadly nightshade--a noteworthy pair of desperadoes.

The other malefactor of the ranunculus family is the aconite, or monk's-hood, a poisonous but very picturesque flower with deep blue blossoms, which takes its name from the hood-like appearance of the upper sepal. "It beareth," Gerarde tells us, "very fair and goodly blew floures in shape like an helmet, which are so beautiful that a man would thinke they were of some excellent vertue." A traitor, a masked bandit it is, of such evil reputation that, according to Pliny, it kills man, "unless it can find in him something else to kill," some disease, to wit; and thus it holds its place in the pharmacopoeia.

The umbellifers include a number of outlaws such as the water-dropworts and cowbane; but among the dangerous members of the tribe there is only one that attains to real greatness, and that of course is the hemlock, a poisoner of old-established renown, as witness the death of Socrates.

"Root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark" is one of the ingredients in the witches' cauldron in _Macbeth_, and the hemlock's name has always been one to conjure with, which may account for the fact that several kindred, but less eminent plants unlawfully aspire to it, and are erroneously thus cla.s.sed. But the true hemlock is unmistakable: the stout bloodspotted stem distinguishes it from the lesser crew; its finely cut fernlike leaves are exceedingly beautiful; and it is of stately habit--I have seen it growing to the height of nine feet, or more, in places where the surrounding brushwood had to be overtopped.

Let us give their due, then, to these outlaws of whom I have spoken, these Robin Hoods of the floral world. Bandits and highwaymen they may be; but after all, our woods and waysides would be much duller if they were banished.

XX

SOME MARSH-DWELLERS

Here are cool mosses deep.

TENNYSON.

WHAT Th.o.r.eau wrote of his Ma.s.sachusetts swamps is hardly less true of ours; a marsh is everywhere a great allurement for botanists. By a road which crosses a certain Suss.e.x Common there is a church, and close behind the church a narrow swampy piece of ground known as "the great bog," which has all the appearance of being waste and valueless; yet whenever I visit the place I think of Th.o.r.eau's words: "_My_ temple is the swamp." For that bog, ignored or despised by the dwellers round the Common, except when a horse or a cow gets stuck in it and has to be hauled out with ropes, is sacred ground to the flower-lover, as being the home not only of a number of characteristic plants--lesser skull-cap, sun-dew, bog-bean, bog-asphodel, marsh St. John's-wort, and the scarcer species of marsh bedstraw--but of one of our rarest and most beautiful gentians, the Calathian violet, known and esteemed by the old herbalists as the "marsh-felwort."

The attention of anyone whose thoughts are attuned to flowers must at once be arrested by the colouring of this splendid plant, for its large funnel-shaped blossoms are of the rich gentian blue, striped with green bands, and as it grows not in the bog itself, but on the close-adjoining banks of heather, it is easily accessible. Yet fortunately, in the locality of which I am speaking, it seems to be untouched by those who cross the Common. On the afternoon in early September when I first found the place, a number of children were blackberrying there, and I dreaded every moment to see them turn aside to pick a bunch of the gentians, which doubtless would soon have been thrown aside to wither, as is the fate of so many spring flowers; but though the blue petals were conspicuous in the heather they were left entirely unmolested. For this merciful abstinence there were probably two reasons: one that the flower-picking habit is exhausted before the autumn; the other that the gentians, however beautiful, are not among the recognized favourites--daffodils, primroses, violets, forget-me-nots, and the like--that by long custom have taken hold of the imagination of childhood. Had it been otherwise, this rare little annual could hardly have survived so long.

In botanical usage there seems to be no difference between the terms "marsh" and "bog," nor need we, I think, follow the rather strained distinction drawn by Anne Pratt, a writer who, though belonging to a somewhat wordy and sentimental school, and indulging in a good deal of what might be called "Anne-prattle," had so real a love of her subject that her best book, _Haunts of the Wild Flowers_, affords very agreeable reading. "The distinction between a bog and a marsh," she says, "is simply that the latter is more wet, and that the foot sinks in; while on a bog the soft soil, though it yields to the pressure of the foot, rises again." The definition itself seems hardly to be based on _terra firma_; but we can fully agree with the writer's conclusion that, at the worst, an adventurous botanist "is often rewarded for the temporary chill by the beauty of the plant which he has gathered." That is a consolation which I have not seldom enjoyed.

But a pleasanter name, in my opinion, than either "marsh" or "bog," is one which is common in the Lake District, and in the northern counties generally, viz. "a moss." It sounds cool and comforting. I recall an occasion when, in the course of a visit to the Newton Regny moss, near Penrith, "the foot sank in," and a good deal more than the foot; but the acquaintance then made for the first time with that giant of the _ranunculus_ order, the great spearwort, was sufficient recompense, for who would complain of a wetting when he met with a b.u.t.tercup four feet in stature?

It so happened, however, that the plant in whose quest I had ventured on the precarious surface of the Newton Regny moss--the great bladderwort--was not to be found on that occasion, though it is reported to make a fine show there in August; possibly, in an early season, it had already finished its flowering, and had sunk, after the inconsiderate manner of its tribe, to the bottom of the pools. Nor did I see its rarer sister, the lesser bladderwort; with whom indeed I have only once had the pleasure of meeting, and that was in a rather awkward place, a deep pond lying close below a railway-bank, and overlooked by the windows of the pa.s.sing trains, so that I not only had to swim for a flower, but to consult a time-table before swimming, in order to avoid having a "gallery" at the moment when seclusion was desired.

Our North-country "mosses" are indeed temples to the flower-lover, by virtue both of the rarer species that inhabit them, and of the unbroken succession of beautiful plants that they maintain, from the rich gold of the globe-flower in early summer to the exquisite purity of the gra.s.s of Parna.s.sus in autumn. Among these bog-plants there is one which to me is very fascinating, though writers are often content to describe its strange purple blossoms as "dingy"--I allude to that wilder relative of the wild strawberry, the marsh-cinquefoil, which, though rather local, is in habit decidedly gregarious. For several years it had eluded me in a Carnarvonshire valley; until one day, wandering by the riverside, I came upon a swampy expanse where it was growing in hundreds, remarkable both for the deep rusty hue of its petals, and for the large strawberry-like fruit that was just beginning to form.

Apart from the more extensive "mosses," the lower slopes of the mountains, both in c.u.mberland and Wales, are often rich in flowers unsuspected by the wayfarer, who, keeping to some upland track, sees nothing on either side but bare peaty moors that appear to be entirely barren. And barren in many cases they are. You may wander for miles and not see a flower; then suddenly perhaps, on rounding a rock, you will find yourself in one of these natural gardens in the wilderness, where the ground is pink with red rattle growing so thickly as to hide the gra.s.s; or white with spotted orchis, handsomer and in greater abundance than is dreamed of in the south; or, a still more glorious sight, tinged over large s.p.a.ces with the yellow of the bog-asphodel, a plant which is beautiful in its fruit as well as its flower, for when the blossoms are pa.s.sed the dry wiry stems turn to deep orange. Sun-dews are everywhere; the quaint and affable b.u.t.terwort is plastered over the wet rocks; and the marsh St. John's-wort, so unlike the rest of its family that the relationship is not always recognized, is frequent in the spongy pools.

Here and there, a small patch of pink on the grey heath, will be seen the delicate bog-pimpernel, which might take rank as the fairest flower of the marsh, were it not that the diminutive ivy-leaved campanula is also trailing its fairy-like form through the wet gra.s.ses, among which it might wholly escape notice unless search were made for it. To realize the perfection of its beauty--the exquisite structure of its small green leaves, slender thread-like stems, and bells of palest blue--you must go down on your knees to examine it, however damp the ground; a fitting act of homage to one of the loveliest of Flora's children.

Better cultivation, preceded by improved drainage, is ceaselessly encroaching on our marshlands and lessening the number of their flowers.

The charming little cranberry, for instance, once so plentiful that it came to market in wagonloads from the fens of the eastern counties, is now far from common; and our cranberry-tarts have to be supplied from oversea. But much more ravishing than the red berries are the rose-coloured flowers, though they are known to scarcely one in a thousand of the persons familiar with the fruit. I always think with pleasure of the day when I first saw them, on the Whinlatter pa.s.s, near Keswick, their small wiry stems creeping on the surface of the swamp, a feast for an epicure's eye. It is under the open air, not under a pie-crust, that such dainties are appreciated as they deserve.

These, then, being some of the many attractions offered by our "mosses,"

is it surprising that the lover of flowers should play the part of a modern "moss-trooper," and ride out over the border in search for such imperishable spoil? His part, indeed, is a much wiser one than that of the old freebooters; for who would risk life in the forcible lifting of other persons' cattle, when at the slight expense to which Anne Pratt alluded--the temporary chill caused by the sinking of his foot in a marsh--he can enrich himself far more agreeably in the manner which I have described?

XXI

A NORTHERN MOOR

Where Tees in tumult leaves his source, Thundering o'er Caldron and High Force.

SCOTT.

A FIRST glance at the bleak and inhospitable moorland of Upper Teesdale would not lead one to suppose that it is famous for its flora. No more desolate-looking upland could be imagined; the great wolds stretch away monotonously, broken only by a few scars that overhang the course of the stream, and devoid of the grandeur that is a.s.sociated with mountain scenery. No houses are visible, except a few white homesteads that dot the slopes--their whiteness, it is said, being of service to the farmers when they return in late evening from some distant market and are faced with the difficulty of finding their own doors. Its wildness is the one charm of the place; in that it is unsurpa.s.sed.

But this bare valley, botanically regarded, is a bit of the far North, interpolated between Durham, Westmorland, and Yorkshire, where the Teesdale basalt or "whinstone" affords an advanced station for many rare plants of the highland type as they trend southward; and there, for five or six miles, from the upper waterfall of Caldron Snout to that of High Force, the banks of the Tees, with the rough pastures, scars, and fells that form its border, hold many floral treasures.

The first flower to attract attention on these wild lawns is that queen of violets, the mountain pansy (_viola lutea_), not uncommon on many midland and northern heaths, but nowhere else growing in such prodigality as here, or with such rich mingling of colours--orange yellow, creamy white, deep purple, and velvet black--till the eye of the traveller is sated with the gorgeous tints. To the violet tribe this pansy stands in somewhat the same relation as does the bird's-eye primrose to the _primulas_; it is a mountain cousin, at once hardier and more beautiful than its kinsfolk of wood and plain. Seeing it in such abundance, we can understand why Teesdale has been described as "the gardener's paradise;" but the expression is not a fitting one, for "gardener" suggests "trowel," and the nurseryman is the sort of Peri to whom the gates of this paradise ought to be for ever closed.

But perhaps the first stroll which a visitor to Upper Teesdale is likely to take, is by the bank of the river just above High Force; and here the most conspicuous plant is a big cinquefoil, the _potentilla fruticosa_, a shrub about three feet in height, bearing large yellow flowers. Rare elsewhere, it is in exuberance beside the Tees; and I remember the amused surprise with which a dalesman regarded me, when he saw my interest in a weed that to him was so familiar and so cheap.

But the smaller notabilities of the district have to be personally searched for; they do not obtrude themselves on the wayfarer's glance.

On the Yorkshire side of the stream stands Cronkley Scar, a b.u.t.tress of the high moor known as Mickle Fell; and here, in the wet gullies, may be found such choice northern plants as the Alpine meadow-rue; the Scottish asphodel (_Tofieldia_), a small relative of the common bog-asphodel; and the curious viviparous bistort, another highland immigrant, bearing a spike of dull white flowers and small bulbs below.

The fell above the scar is a desolate tract, frequented by golden plover and other moorland birds. On one occasion when I ascended it I was overtaken by a violent storm of wind and rain, which compelled me to leave the further heights of Mickle Fell unexplored, and to retreat to the less exposed pastures of Widdibank on the opposite side of the Tees, here a broad but shallow mountain stream, which in dry weather can be forded without difficulty but becomes a roaring torrent after heavy rains. In the course of two short visits, one in mid-July, the other in the spring of the following year, I twice had the opportunity of seeing the river in either mood, first in unruffled tranquillity, then in furious spate.

It is in May or early June that Teesdale is at the height of its glory; for the plant which lends it a special renown is the spring gentian, perhaps the brightest jewel among all British flowers, small, but a true Alpine, and of that intense blue which signalizes the gentian race. Here this n.o.ble flower grows in plenty, not in wide profusion like the pansies, but in large and thriving colonies, not confined to one side of the stream. It was on the Durham bank that I first saw it--one of those rare scenes that a flower-lover cannot forget, for the blue gentians were intermingled with pink bird's-eye primroses, only less lovely than themselves, and close by were a few spikes of the Alpine bartsia, whose sombre purple was in marked contrast with the brilliant hues of its companions.

Of this rare bartsia I had plucked a single flower on my previous visit to the same spot, but then in somewhat hurried circ.u.mstances. I had been crossing the wide pastures near Widdibank farm in company with a friend, who, having heard rumours of the temper of Teesdale bulls, had unwisely allowed his thoughts to be somewhat distracted from the pansies. We were in the middle of a field of vast extent, when I heard my companion asking anxiously: "Is _that_ one?" It certainly _was_ one; not a pansy, but a bull; and he was advancing towards us with very unfriendly noises and gestures. We therefore retired as quickly as we could, without seeming to run--he slowly following us--in the direction of the river; and there, under a high bank, over which we expected every moment the bulky head to reappear, I saw the Alpine bartsia, and stooped to pick one as we fled, my friend mildly deprecating even so slight a delay.

Now, however, on my second visit, I was able to examine the bank at my leisure, and to have full enjoyment of as striking a group of flowers as could be seen on English soil--gentian, bird's-eye primrose, Alpine bartsia--and as if these were not sufficient, the mountain pansy running riot in the pasture just above.

So far, I have spoken only of the plants which I myself saw; there are other and greater rarities in Teesdale which the casual visitor can hardly expect to encounter. The yellow marsh-saxifrage (_S. hirculus_) occurs in two or three places on the slopes of Mickle Fell; so, too, in limestone crevices does the mountain-avens (_dryas octopetala_), and the winter-green (_pyrola secunda_); while on Little Fell, which lies further to the south-west, towards Appleby, the scarce Alpine forget-me-not is reported to be plentiful. I was told by a botanist that, in crossing the moors from Teesdale to Westmorland, he once picked up what he took for a fine clump of the common star-saxifrage, and afterwards found to his surprise that it was the Alpine snow-saxifrage (_S. nivalis_), which during the past thirty years has become exceedingly rare both in the Lake District and in North Wales.

The haunts of the rarer flowers are not likely to be discovered in a day or two, nor yet in a week or two: it is only to him who has gone many times over the ground that such secrets will disclose themselves; but even the pa.s.sing rambler must be struck, as I was, by the number of noteworthy plants that Teesdale wears, so to speak, upon its sleeve. The globe-flower revels in the moist meadows; so, too, do the water-avens and the marsh-cinquefoil, nor is the b.u.t.terfly orchis far to seek; and though the yellow marsh-saxifrage may remain hidden, there is no lack of the yellow saxifrage of the mountain (_saxifraga aizoides_), to console you, if it can, for the absence of its rarer cousin. The cross-leaved bedstraw (_galium boreale_), another North-country plant, luxuriates on low wet cliffs by the river.