Ditches are frequently quite overgrown with the Water Pepper or Biting Persicaria (_Polygonum Hydropiper_), which is very much like the Spotted Persicaria (p. 205) of the same order (_Polygonaceæ_), but is much more slender, is creeping and rooting at the base, and more or less biting to the taste. Its stem is freely branched, from one to three feet high; its leaves narrow and wavy, with membranous stipules much fringed at the top; and the little pinkish-green flowers are in slender, drooping, interrupted spikes, leafy at the base. Of the _Orchidaceæ_ we shall note here but one species--the Marsh Helleborine (_Epipactis palustris_), which is widely distributed, and really abundant in places, flowering during July and August. It is very much like the Broad-leaved Helleborine described on p. 308, and represented on Plate II, but is not so tall, being only about a foot high, and its leaves are narrow. The flowers, too, are fewer than in the Broad-leaved Helleborine, and the raceme is not one-sided. The sepals are narrow, of a pale green colour, striped with red or purple; and the petals are white, striped with red at the base. The lower lobe of the lip is blunt and thick; and the bracts are shorter than the flowers. Rushes and Sedges are so abundant in marshes and other wet places that they form quite a characteristic feature of these localities; and the number of common species is so large that we must necessarily confine our attention to a very small proportion. The Rushes, which constitute the order _Juncaceæ_, are stiff, smooth plants, often of such social habits that they cover large patches of wet or watery soil. Their stems are usually erect, and seldom branched; and their stiff, smooth leaves are frequently cylindrical, like the stems, with a soft, pith-like tissue within, but occasionally flat and narrow like those of grasses. The flowers are perfect, with a regular, inferior perianth of six dry segments; and they have generally six stamens, a three-celled ovary, and three slender stigmas. They are very small, either separate or in clusters; and each flower or cluster has a dry, sheathing bract at its base. [Illustration: THE BOG ASPHODEL.]