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Flowers of the Farm

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<h2> CHAPTER VI</h2> <h3>IN "ASHMEAD"</h3> There are many other flowers besides the Clover in Ashmead to-day, and this afternoon we will look at some that grow among the grass. One of these you may perhaps call a weed, yet it is one of the most beautiful wild flowers in England. I mean the golden Dandelion. On a lawn or in a garden bed it would certainly be a weed, and a very troublesome one. Here among the grass we need only think of it as a very lovely flower. See what a rich golden yellow the little florets of the blossom are. Plants like the Dandelion, in which the blossom is composed of a number of florets, are called "composite" plants. If we examine the plant closely we shall find that each stalk which bears a blossom, and each long deeply indented leaf, grows, like the flower-stem and leaf of the Primrose, from a very short underground stem. It is from the indented leaves that the Dandelion gets its name. The leaves have something the appearance of the teeth of a lion. Now the French name for lion's tooth is dent de lion, and we English have corrupted this into dandelion. Each flower-stem is round and, when we pull one, we see that it is a hollow tube. We bite a piece of the stalk as we did with the Clover blossom. What a difference! The Clover was quite sweet, but the Dandelion is very bitter. You may not like the taste perhaps, but the white milky-looking juice is quite wholesome. Dandelion tea and Dandelion beer are often made by country people, and the leaves give a pleasant flavour to a salad. Shall we pull up a plant and examine the root? I am afraid we cannot, unless you care to go back to the house for a fork or a trowel. The Dandelion has a very long strong root--tap-root--which goes deep into the ground; and there is no tall main stem of which we can take hold--the leaves and flower stalks only break off in our hands. Here is a stalk from which the flower has fallen, leaving only the seed. Of what does it remind you? Of the Traveller's Joy in autumn? Yes; the Dandelion has what is called a "pappus" attached to its seed, rather similar to the feathery tail of the Traveller's Joy. This makes the Dandelion a troublesome weed; the seeds are easily carried by the wind and, if a patch of dandelions is allowed to go to seed, it will produce fresh plants quite far away. Before the seeds are scattered each head is like a round white fluffy ball. Here are daisies, with their dainty white florets often tinged with pink. In the centre of each blossom is a yellow spot. Every night the white florets fold up over the yellow centre, and do not open until the morning. This fact explains to us the Daisy's name; it is the Day's Eye which opens at dawn and shuts at night. The Daisy is a little flower which everyone knows and loves, yet in the wrong place it is a weed. It is a perennial and it spreads very fast. Of course both perennials and annuals spread by means of their seed, but perennials also spread in other ways as well. We will see how the Daisy does this. There; with my pocket knife I have easily dug up a plant. The root is small and compact, not long like that of the Dandelion. But, when I try to lift the Daisy plant from the grass, I find that it is still held down by a stout tough thread branching from the root. This thread is connected with another Daisy plant; from that one there is another thread connected with a third plant. When we have at last got our plant clear away from the ground, three more are hanging to it by these threads. That is how the Daisy spreads; it throws out these thread-like shoots from the root, and from these grow another root and plant. I knew only too well what we should find; there are far too many daisies in my lawn at home, and I found out long ago the way in which they spread so fast. If daisies are allowed to increase in this way they form large clumps which smother and kill the grass. We notice that each flower-stem and each leaf of the Daisy springs from a very short underground stem, as those of the Dandelion do. <table summary="" style="float: left"> <tr align="center"> <td style="border: none"> <ANTIMG border="0" src="images/047s.jpg" width-obs="233" height-obs="304" alt="Bulbous Crowsfoot."> </tr> <tr align="center"> <td>Bulbous Crowsfoot</td> </tr> </table> Daisies and dandelions are plentiful in Ashmead, and so are the yellow buttercups. There are, however, not quite so many buttercups as you might think at first. The real name of what we call the Buttercup is the Bulbous Crowfoot, and there is also a Meadow Crowfoot in the field. A third crowfoot is the Corn Crowfoot. To-day we will notice one or two differences between the two plants we see here. The blossoms of both plants have five smooth shining yellow petals. We see, however, that those of the Bulbous Crowfoot or Buttercup form a real cup, while the petals of the Meadow Crowfoot spread out almost flat. The Meadow Crowfoot grows two or three feet high; the Buttercup is a shorter plant. The flowers are pretty, but that, I am afraid, is all that we can say for either of these plants. They are both of them bitter and unwholesome, and horses and cattle avoid eating them. Some people even say that to carry a bunch of the stems will make the hands sore; so I think that we will only look at and admire the flowers where they grow. The Cowslip is a very different plant indeed and we will not call it a weed. Even Mr. Hammond is not sorry to see it here; for he is fond of a glass of the sweet cowslip wine which Mrs. Hammond will make if we busy ourselves and take home some large basketfuls of the drooping blossoms. Before we set to work, however, let us examine the plant. Looking at a stalk of Cowslip blossoms we see something peculiar about it at once--something unlike the other flowers we have seen. Six or seven drooping blossoms grow from the stalk we have picked, and they all grow from the very top of the stalk. The point at the top of the stalk from which the blossoms grow is called the "umbel." Each blossom has five yellow petals joined together to form a corolla. In the centre of the blossom, where these petals meet, each is marked with a spot of deep orange-red colour. The yellow petals are comparatively small, and peep out of a long pale green sheath called the "calyx." Surely we have seen a flower like this before--the Primrose in the little coppice. Yes; the Primrose had five pale yellow petals, rather larger than those of the Cowslip, and joined together to form a corolla; they grew out of a long green calyx. Also each petal had a spot of darker yellow in the centre of the blossom. The leaves of both the Primrose and the Cowslip are much wrinkled, and they grow from a short underground stem. But, you say, each Primrose blossom grew alone on the top of a long stem. Yes, but if we had dug up a Primrose plant, we should have found that several flower stems grew from the same point--the top of a very short stem which hardly appeared above the ground. They grew from an umbel, and the Primrose is closely related to the Cowslip. The difference is that the blossoms of the Primrose grow on long stems from a short-stemmed umbel. Those of the Cowslip grow on short stems from a long-stemmed umbel. <hr>     <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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