Plants -- Identification; Wild flowers -- Great Britain
The Wild Raspberry (_Rubus Idæus_--order _Rosaceæ_) is to be found in
the woods and thickets of most parts of Britain. It may be easily
distinguished from other species of its genus by the following
description:--Rootstock creeping, with many suckers. Stems round, erect,
with a soft down and numerous weak prickles. Leaves pinnate, with three
or five ovate, pointed, toothed leaflets, pale green above, and white
and hoary beneath. Stipules small, very narrow and pointed, usually
attached part way up to the leafstalk. Flowers white, in long, terminal,
drooping panicles. Calyx five-lobed; petals five, short and narrow;
stamens numerous; and fruit consisting of a globular cluster of red or
yellow, hoary, one-seeded, succulent carpels which usually separate from
the conical receptacle when ripe. The bush grows from three to five feet
high, and flowers from June to August.
Two species of Willow Herb (order _Onagraceæ_) grow in copses and
thickets, and are easily recognised by their rose-coloured flowers with
very long, inferior ovaries. One is the beautiful French Willow or Rose
Bay Willow Herb (_Epilobium angustifolium_), an erect plant, varying
from two to six feet in height, widely distributed, though not very
common, flowering during July and August. Its leaves are alternate,
narrow-elliptical, entire or with very small teeth, and very shortly
stalked. The flowers are about an inch in diameter, numerous, forming a
very long, loose, terminal, tapering raceme, with a narrow bract at the
base of each pedicel. The calyx is tubular, four-cleft, attached to the
top of the long ovary; the corolla consists of four entire, nearly
equal, spreading petals; the stamens, eight in number, all bend
downwards; and the stigma is deeply divided into four lobes, on a long
style which also bends downward. The fruit is a four-celled capsule, two
or three inches long, which splits when ripe, its valves curling
downwards and exposing numerous minute seeds, each of which has a silky
tuft of fine hairs that enables it to be dispersed by the wind. The
plant is most frequently seen in damp copses, and among the undergrowth
of damp woods.
[Illustration: THE DOGWOOD.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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