Volume II Part 5 (1/2)

4. She shall gather: first, the Euphrasy, which makes the turf on the brow of the hill glitter as if with new-fallen manna; then, from one of the blue cl.u.s.ters on the top of the garden wall, the common bright blue Speedwell; and, from the garden bed beneath, a dark blue spire of Veronica spicata; then, at the nearest opening into the wood, a little foxglove in its first delight of shaking out its bells; then--what next does the Doctor say?--a snapdragon? we must go back into the garden for that--here is a goodly crimson one, but what the little speedwell will think of him for a relative _I_ can't think!--a mullein?--that we must do without for the moment; a monkey flower?--that we will do without, altogether; a lady's slipper?--say rather a goblin's with the gout! but, such as the flower-cobbler has made it, here is one of the kind that people praise, out of the greenhouse,--and yet a figwort we must have, too; which I see on referring to Loudon, may be balm-leaved, hemp-leaved, tansy-leaved, nettle-leaved, wing-leaved, heart-leaved, ear-leaved, spear-leaved, or lyre-leaved. I think I can find a balm-leaved one, though I don't know what to make of it when I've got it, but it's called a 'Scorodonia' in Sowerby, and something very ugly besides;--I'll put a bit of Teucrium Scorodonia in, to finish: and now--how will my young Proserpina arrange her bouquet, and rank the family relations to their contentment?

5. She has only one kind of flowers--in her hand, as botanical cla.s.sification stands at present; and whether the system be more rational, or in any human sense more scientific, which puts calceolaria and speedwell together,--and foxglove and euphrasy; and runs them on one side into the mints, and on the other into the nightshades;--naming them, meanwhile, some from diseases, some from vermin, some from blockheads, and the rest anyhow:--or the method I am pleading for, which teaches us, watchful of their seasonable return and chosen abiding places, to a.s.sociate in our memory the flowers which truly resemble, or fondly companion, or, in time kept by the signs of Heaven, succeed, each other; and to name them in some historical connection with the loveliest fancies and most helpful faiths of the ancestral world--Proserpina be judge; with every maid that sets flowers on brow or breast--from Thule to Sicily.

6. We will unbind our bouquet, then, and putting all the rest of its flowers aside, examine the range and nature of the little blue cl.u.s.ter only.

And first--we have to note of it, that the plan of the blossom in all the kinds is the same; an irregular quatre-foil: and irregular quatrefoils are of extreme rarity in flower form. I don't myself know _one_, except the Veronica. The cruciform vegetables--the heaths, the olives, the lilacs, the little Tormentillas, and the poppies, are all perfectly symmetrical. Two of the petals, indeed, as a rule, are different from the other two, except in the heaths; and thus a distinctly crosslet form obtained, but always an equally balanced one: while in the Veronica, as in the Violet, the blossom always refers itself to a supposed place on the stalk with respect to the ground; and the upper petal is always the largest.

The supposed place is often very suppositious indeed--for cl.u.s.ters of the common veronicas, if luxuriant, throw their blossoms about anywhere. But the idea of an upper and lower petal is always kept in the flower's little mind.

7. In the second place, it is a quite open and flat quatrefoil--so separating itself from the belled quadrature of the heath, and the tubed and primrose-like quadrature of the cruciferae; and, both as a quatrefoil, and as an open one, it is separated from the foxgloves and snapdragons, which are neither quatrefoils, nor open; but are cinqfoils shut up!

8. In the third place, open and flat though the flower be, it is monopetalous; all the four arms of the cross strictly becoming one in the centre; so that, though the blue foils _look_ no less sharply separate than those of a b.u.t.tercup or a cistus; and are so delicate that one expects them to fall from their stalk if we breathe too near,--do but lay hold of one,--and, at the touch, the entire blossom is lifted from its stalk, and may be laid, in perfect shape, on our paper before us, as easily as if it had been a nicely made-up blue bonnet, lifted off its stand by the milliner.

I pause here, to consider a little; because I find myself mixing up two characteristics which have nothing necessary in their relation;--namely, the unity of the blossom, and its coming easily off the stalk. The separate petals of the cistus and cherry fall as easily as the foxglove drops its bells;--on the other hand, there are monopetalous things that don't drop, but hold on like the convoluta,[19] and make the rest of the tree sad for their dying. I do not see my way to any systematic noting of decadent or persistent corolla; but, in pa.s.sing, we may thank the veronica for never allowing us to see how it fades,[20] and being always cheerful and lovely, while it is with us.

9. And for a farther specialty, I think we should take note of the purity and simplicity of its _floral_ blue, not sprinkling itself with unwholesome sugar like a larkspur, nor varying into coppery or turquoise-like hue as the forget-me-not; but keeping itself as modest as a blue print, pale, in the most frequent kinds; but pure exceedingly; and rejoicing in fellows.h.i.+p with the grey of its native rocks. The palest of all I think it will be well to remember as Veronica Clara, the ”Poor Clare” of Veronicas. I find this note on it in my diary,--

'The flower of an exquisite grey-white, like lichen, or shaded h.o.a.r-frost, or dead silver; making the long-weathered stones it grew upon perfect with a finished modesty of paleness, as if the flower _could_ be blue, and would not, for their sake. Laying its fine small leaves along in embroidery, like Anagallis tenella,--indescribable in the tender feebleness of it--afterwards as it grew, dropping the little blossoms from the base of the spire, before the buds at the top had blown. Gathered, it was happy beside me, with a little water under a stone, and put out one pale blossom after another, day by day.'

10. Lastly, and for a high worthiness, in my estimate, note that it is _wild_, of the wildest, and proud in pure descent of race; submitting itself to no follies of the cur-breeding florist. Its species, though many resembling each other, are severally constant in aspect, and easily recognizable; and I have never seen it provoked to glare into any gigantic impudence at a flower show. Fortunately, perhaps, it is scentless, and so despised.

11. Before I attempt arranging its families, we must note that while the corolla itself is one of the most constant in form, and so distinct from all other blossoms that it may be always known at a glance; the leaves and habit of growth vary so greatly in families of different climates, and those born for special situations, moist or dry, and the like, that it is quite impossible to characterize Veronic, or Veronique, vegetation in general terms. One can say, comfortably, of a strawberry, that it is a creeper, without expecting at the next moment to see a steeple of strawberry blossoms rise to contradict us;--we can venture to say of a foxglove that it grows in a spire, without any danger of finding, farther on, a carpet of prostrate and entangling digitalis; and we may p.r.o.nounce of a b.u.t.tercup that it grows mostly in meadows, without fear of finding ourselves, at the edge of the next thicket, under the shadow of a b.u.t.tercup-bush growing into valuable timber. But the Veronica reclines with the lowly,[21] upon occasion, and aspires, with the proud; is here the pleased companion of the ground-ivies, and there the unrebuked rival of the larkspurs: on the rocks of Coniston it effaces itself almost into the film of a lichen; it pierces the snows of Iceland with the gentian: and in the Falkland Islands is a white-blossomed evergreen, of which botanists are in dispute whether it be Veronica or Olive.

12. Of these many and various forms, I find the manners and customs alike inconstant; and this of especially singular in them--that the Alpine and northern species bloom hardily in contest with the retiring snows, while with us they wait till the spring is past, and offer themselves to us only in consolation for the vanished violet and primrose. As we farther examine the ways of plants, I suppose we shall find some that determine upon a fixed season, and will bloom methodically in June or July, whether in Abyssinia or Greenland; and others, like the violet and crocus, which are flowers of the spring, at whatever time of the favouring or frowning year the spring returns to their country. I suppose also that botanists and gardeners know all these matters thoroughly: but they don't put them into their books, and the clear notions of them only come to me now, as I think and watch.

13. Broadly, however, the families of the Veronica fall into three main divisions,--those which have round leaves lobed at the edge, like ground ivy; those which have small thyme-like leaves; and those which have long leaves like a foxglove's, only smaller--never more than two or two and a half inches long. I therefore take them in these connections, though without any bar between the groups; only separating the Regina from the other thyme-leaved ones, to give her due precedence; and the rest will then arrange themselves into twenty families, easily distinguishable and memorable.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. IV.]

I have chosen for Veronica Regina, the brave Icelandic one, which pierces the snow in first spring, with lovely small shoots of perfectly set leaves, no larger than a grain of wheat; the flowers in a lifted cl.u.s.ter of five or six together, not crowded, yet not loose; large, for veronica--about the size of a silver penny, or say half an inch across--deep blue, with ruby centre.

My woodcut, Fig. 4, is outlined[22] from the beautiful engraving D.

342,[23]--there called 'fruticulosa,' from the number of the young shoots.

14. Beneath the Regina, come the twenty easily distinguished families, namely:--

1. Chamaedrys. 'Ground-oak.' I cannot tell why so called--its small and rounded leaves having nothing like oak leaves about them, except the serration, which is common to half, at least, of all leaves that grow. But the idea is all over Europe, apparently. Fr. 'pet.i.t chene:' German and English 'Germander,' a merely corrupt form of Chamaedrys.

The representative English veronica ”Germander Speedwell”--very prettily drawn in S. 986; too tall and weed-like in D. 448.

2. Hederifolia. Ivy-leaved: but more properly, cymbalaria-leaved. It is the English field representative, though blue-flowered, of the Byzantine white veronica, V. Cymbalaria, very beautifully drawn in G. 9. Hederifolia well in D. 428.

3. Agrestis. Fr. 'Rustique.' We ought however clearly to understand whether 'agrestis,' used by English botanists, is meant to imply a literally field flower, or only a 'rustic' one, which might as properly grow in a wood. I shall always myself use 'agrestis' in the literal sense, and 'rustica' for 'rustique.' I see no reason, in the present case, for separating the Polite from the Rustic flower: the agrestis, D. 449 and S. 971, seems to me not more meekly rec.u.mbent, nor more frankly cultureless, than the so-called Polita, S. 972: there seems also no French acknowledgment of its politeness, and the Greek family, G. 8, seem the rudest and wildest of all.

Quite a _field_ flower it is, I believe, lying always low on the ground; rec.u.mbent, but not creeping. Note this difference: no fastening roots are thrown out by the reposing stems of this Veronica; a creeping or accurately 'rampant' plant roots itself in advancing. Conf. Nos. 5, 6.

4. Arvensis. We have yet to note a still finer distinction in epithet.

'Agrestis' will properly mean a flower of the open ground--yet not caring whether the piece of earth be cultivated or not, so long as it is under clear sky. But when _agri_-culture has turned the unfruitful acres into 'arva beata,'--if then the plant thrust itself between the furrows of the plough, it is properly called 'Arvensis.'

I don't quite see my way to the same distinction in English,--perhaps I may get into the habit, as time goes on, of calling the Arvenses consistently furrow-flowers, and the Agrestes field-flowers. Furrow-veronica is a tiresomely long name, but must do for the present, as the best interpretation of its Latin character, ”vulgatissima in cultis et arvis.”

D. 515. The blossom itself is exquisitely delicate; and we may be thankful, both here and in Denmark, for such a lovely 'vulgate.'