The lily of the valley is one of those favoured plants which are
everywhere highly esteemed; even the man who in general cares but little
for wildflowers takes this one to his heart, or, what is worse, to his
garden. I have already quoted Mr. C. A. Johns's queer appreciation of
this native British wildflower as "a universally admired garden plant."
On the wooded hill known as Arnside Park the "May lily," as it used to
be called (and here it is certainly not "of the valley"), covers many
acres of ground, and justifies the title "Lily-land" as applied to the
Arnside neighbourhood. What I found still more interesting was an almost
equal abundance of the stone bramble (_rubus saxatilis_), which grows
intermixed with the lilies over a large portion of the wood.
On these Westmorland Cliffs, as in those of Carnarvonshire, the
blood-red crane's-bill is conspicuous, but it is much less plentiful,
nor are the outstanding flowers of the two localities the same. One of
the commonest at Arnside is the tall ploughman's spikenard, known
locally as "frankincense": and on the lawns that skirt the Knott one
often sees the mountain-cudweed or "cat's-foot," the gromwell or "grey
millet," and the beautiful little dwarf orchis. The district is rather
rich in orchids; among others, I found the rare narrow-leaved
helleborine (_cephalanthera ensifolia_) in the Arnside woods. The deadly
nightshade is frequent; so, too, is the four-leaved herb-Paris, which a
resident described to me as being here "almost a weed." But there are
two other flowers that demand more special mention.
In a lane near Arnside Tower, a ruin that lies below the Knott on its
inland side, there is a considerable growth of green hellebore,
apparently at the very spot where its presence was recorded two
centuries ago. Though not a very rare plant, it is extremely local; and
owing to its strongly marked features, the large palmate leaves and pale
green flowers, is not likely to go unnoticed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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