The flowers grow in heads which contain a great many dull purple flowers crowded together in one bundle. These heads do not grow singly as in the Scotch Thistle. You will find three or four close together at the end of the main stem, and there is usually one head of flowers much further out than the others. The green covering which protects the lower part of the flowers and binds them together is not hard and prickly as in the Scotch Thistle. When you pick this covering to pieces you find that it is filled with woolly down. The stem of the Marsh Plume Thistle is stiff and straight, and it has green wings with very sharp prickles up each side. The leaves are long and narrow, and they are edged with sharp points. Each leaf is dark green above, but underneath it is covered with white down. 3. FIELD SCABIOUS This pretty plant is common over most of Britain. You find it on dry banks and by the edge of fields, and it blooms all summer and autumn. The flowers are very interesting. They grow in a bouquet which contains many flowers crowded together at the end of a stout stalk. The centre flowers are a reddish pink colour, and have many tall yellow-headed stamens standing up beyond them. The petals of these flowers are joined together into a tube which is unevenly divided round the mouth. If you open the tube gently, you will find that the stamens are clinging to the inside. Outside these pinky flowers there is a border of purply-blue tube-flowers, and these are much larger than the group in the centre. At the mouth of each tube there is a purple strap, and these straps stand out like a frill round the bouquet. Behind these flowers there is a double row of small pointed green leaves. The stem leaves are shaped like a feather, and they have long narrow fingers growing up each side of a centre stalk. There is always a solitary finger at the end of the stalk, and each finger is covered with soft hairs. PLATE XXXIV: 1. COMMON LING OR HEATHER. 2. BLACK KNAPWEED. 3. WILD THYME. 1. COMMON LING OR HEATHER The Heather is so well known that it scarcely requires any description. It grows on moors and commons and mountain-sides in England, Scotland and Ireland, and in autumn you will find it covering the ground like a carpet, sometimes growing in bushes as high as your knee.