"Sometimes, for instance, it abounds on the slaty beach at
Penrose, but scarcely a single specimen is to be found on the
opposite side of the lake. Next year, perhaps, it grows in
profusion on the eastern beaches, but has disappeared from its
former station." (JOHNS.)
The strapwort grows nowhere else in Britain but here and in two places
in Devonshire.
On the cliffs may be seen the sky-blue vernal squill in May and June,
but by midsummer it has disappeared to make room for the autumnal
squill, a much less beautiful species.
In marshy spots may be found the pale pinguicula and the buckbean. Four
kinds of genistas are to be seen in flower, bright and yellow.
The purple allium, or chive garlic, may be found where water has stood
during the winter.
The common asparagus grows in great abundance in the clefts of the
rocks. In ravines flourishes the blood-red crane's-bill, and the common
harebell, so desiderated on the granite formation, but not found there,
may here be met with.
Mr. Johns says:--
"A sloping bank on the right hand of Caerthillian valley, about
a hundred yards from the sea, produces, I think, more botanical
rarities than any other spot of equal dimensions in Great
Britain. Here are crowded together in so small a space that I
actually covered with my hat growing specimens all together of
_Lotus hispidus_, _Trifolium Bocconi_, _T. Molinerii_, and _T.
Strictum_. The first of these is far from common, the others
grow nowhere else in Great Britain."
The cross-leaved heath, found elsewhere pretty generally, with its
little cluster of pale waxlike bells at the head of the stalk, does not
affect the Lizard.
The woad, wherewith our British ancestors dyed themselves, flourishes
abundantly in the Meneage peninsula. It has bright yellow flowers in
panicles growing on an upright stem, some two or three feet high, and
appears in June and July.
The woad (_Isatis tinctoria_) yields true indigo, but it contains only
about one-thirtieth of the quantity found on the indigo tinctoria
cultivated in India. The leaves are ground to a paste in a mill, and
then allowed to ferment during eight or twelve days. After that they
are formed into balls and dried.
In ancient times this pasty mess was directly used in dyeing by those
who carried on all kinds of domestic works at home. During the
putrefactive fermentation of the woad ammonia is formed and hydrogen
evolved. The latter, while in the nascent state, reduces the blue
indigo to the state of white indigo, which, being soluble, can
penetrate the wool to be dyed, where it is deposited in the insoluble
state as blue indigo, on exposure to the oxygen of the air.
There is an incident in the life of S. Piran, or Kieran, who founded a
church, S. Keverne, in the Lizard district, which is connected with
dyeing with woad.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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