Besides the poppies there is Charlock in the field; not much, Mr. Hammond will be glad to know, for he has been trying for many years to get rid of this plant altogether. Pretty as the yellow blossoms of the Charlock are, it is one of the most troublesome weeds which the farmer has to fight. It is only an annual certainly, and each seed-pod holds no more than six or seven seeds. The seeds, however, are oily, and this oiliness preserves them. If they are ploughed deep into the ground, they may live there for several years, and will produce a plant when turned up again by the plough or the scuffle.Mr. Hammond tells me that some years ago this field was full of Charlock, and in the early summer there would be more Charlock than wheat to be seen. This is how he got rid of it. Every year he ploughed the field and got it ready for the crop as early as possible. Then the Charlock sprang up before the crop of corn or turnips was sown; thus it could be rooted out. Still, as we see to-day, there is a little left, though it is growing less each year.Charlock is wild mustard. There is more seed than blossom here to-day, for the flowering time for Charlock is in June. If we chew some seed from a pod, we shall find it hot and biting to the tongue. In some parts of England many farmers grow mustard as one of their crops.Near Willow Farm some farmers grow mustard as a catch-crop. They sow it in autumn, as soon as another crop has been taken off the field. In the spring it is eaten by sheep, or else it is ploughed in. A catch-crop ploughed in like this enriches the land. Moreover a number of weeds are buried with the catch-crop before they have time to blossom and to shed their seed.The yellow blossom of the Charlock is pretty, and the Poppy is the finest scarlet wild flower we have. There is a third flower among the wheat to-day, the beautiful blue Corn Flower or Corn Bluebottle. It is no more welcome to the farmer than the Poppy and the Charlock are. It is a perennial, and therefore difficult to get rid of. Moreover when we pull up a stem we find it quite hard work, it is so tough. These tough stems blunt the sickles of the reapers and the knives of the reaping machine.Creeping Thistle.Field Scabious.Creeping ThistleField Scabious
Evergreen Alkanet.Cornflower.Smaller Bindweed.Evergreen AlkanetCornflowerSmaller Bindweed
To us it is only a very beautiful flower. The florets in the centre of each blossom are dark purple, but the outer ones are of a brighter blue. The leaves are long and narrow; those near the bottom of the stem are rather broader than those higher up. The stems themselves are not round, but angular. We can feel corners or angles as we hold one in our hand. They are also covered with a kind of down.Charlock.Charlock
There is another flower which we shall see better if we come to the stubble field after the wheat is cut; but some of it is near the gate to-day. This is the Smaller Bindweed. We see that it is a relation of the Large Bindweed in the garden hedge. It has leaves and flowers of the same shape, but the flowers are smaller, and are pink and white. Those of the Large Bindweed are rarely anything but pure white.This is another troublesome weed here. It does not climb, as the Large Bindweed does, but creeps along the ground, twining round everything it meets. In the potato field it is often even more troublesome than here. Corn iscut, but potatoes aredugout of the ground. The Small Bindweed forms such a thick carpet over the field, and twines round the potato stems so closely, that it is often very difficult to dig up the potatoes.Here is another little flower which I am glad to show you now, the Scarlet Pimpernel. This and the Poppy are the onlyscarletwild flowers we have. There are manypink, and also manypurpleflowers, but only these two are reallyscarlet.The Pimpernel differs from the Poppy in almost everything except its colour. The Poppy has a tall stout stem and its blossoms are very large. The Pimpernel trails on the ground and has tiny flowers. The blossoms of the Poppy have four petals, those of the Pimpernel have five. These are a beautiful scarlet, but notquiteso bright a scarlet as those of the Poppy.Pimpernel.Pimpernel
The leaves grow in pairs, and the small bare stalks which carry a flower at their ends spring from the stem beside the leaves. The leaves are sessile on the stem. Turning a leaf over we find that on its under side are black or dark purple spots.
The blossoms of the Pimpernel close up when rain is near, and it is often called the Poor Man's Weatherglass. Sometimes, but very rarely, a plant is found which has pink, or even pure white blossoms. There is also a blue Pimpernel. Another Pimpernel is the Bog Pimpernel; but we shall not find it in this dry field of corn, as you may guess by the name.One more flower we will look at, and then it will be time to leave our corn-field and to search elsewhere. Growing on the hedgebank at the side of the field is a pretty lilac-blue flower on a long bare stalk. It is the Field Scabious.The blossoms are in shape like a round ball very much flattened--like a round pincushion. There are no large petals here, as with the Poppy, but a great number of small florets. Those on the outer edge of the blossom are larger than those inside. Each floret is a tiny tube or pipe.The leaves are on separate stalks from those which bear the flowers, and they grow in pairs. They are divided into several pairs of lobes, with a single lobe at the end of each leaf. Some leaves grow from that part of the stem which is underground, and these are larger than the others, and are sometimes of a different shape. Both the leaves and the stem are hairy.
We have now seen a good many Flowers of the Farm; we have found them in the coppice, on the garden wall, and in the fields. To-day we will go a little further off, three miles away.Gorse.Gorse
You say, "Surely that is a long way off for the farmer to have a field." It is not exactly a field. The Chase is a great open common or moor, which belongs to the village or parish where Willow Farm is. Nearly all the people of the village have certain rights of pasturage on it; they may let their horses and cattle and sheep graze there. Every now and then Mr. Hammond sends some of his sheep to the Chase to feed there for a few weeks. It is very high dry ground, and that is good for sheep.The road runs through the middle of the great common without any hedge or fence on either side. There are horses and sheep and cattle here on this May morning; donkeys too. All the sheep are marked, and we soon see some which belong to Willow Farm; they are stamped on the back in large letters "W.H." for William Hammond. A farmer easily knows his own horses and cows; sheep are less easy to recognise, and are usually marked.One of the flowers of the Chase we see at once. In whatever direction we look across the common there is a perfect blaze of gold--the blossoms of the prickly Gorse or Furze. Spring is the time to see its mass of golden yellow blossoms best; but I do not think there is a week, or even a day, in the whole year when some of the flowers are not out. Did you ever hear the saying, "Kissing is out of season when the Gorse is out of bloom." That is never!The Gorse flowers are beautiful and their scent is sweet. As to gathering them, however, there is a terrible difficulty. The flowers grow among long sharp spikes which cover the stems closely; you would almost as soon gather nettles! There are very few real leaves, and they are small and not easily seen; but the thorns are beautiful to look at, if not to touch--they are such a rich dark green.Nor is Gorse a useless plant. If the prickly stems are bruised or mashed a little they form a fodder which animals like. Indeed, a pony near us seems to enjoy them as they are; he is tearing off and eating piece after piece from a Gorse bush. His mouth must be less tender than ours!Later in the summer we visit the Chase again to find some flowers that were not out in May. On our way we pass a potato field in blossom--a very pretty sight. These blossoms are a palish purple, but sometimes the potato flowers are white.Hairbell.Hairbell
The Hairbell is a flower which we shall now find on the Chase--a great contrast to the stout and thorny bush of Gorse. The Hairbell's stem is almost as slender as a thread, although it stands upright. Each blossom is a dainty little blue bell of five petals. White blossoms are sometimes found, but not often.There are leaves as well as flowers on the stem. Growing from the lower part of the stem, close to the ground, we may perhaps find some broader, rounder leaves; perhaps not, however, for these lower leaves soon wither and die away.The Hairbell loves to grow where there is fresh pure air. Here on the Chase we are high up; it has been a long steep climb from Willow Farm, and we are more than five hundred feet above sea level. Far below us, a few miles away, we see a broad river on which steamers and sailing-ships are passing up and down. Away to the west is the sea, from which a breeze is nearly always blowing across the Chase. No wonder that the little Hairbell loves the spot.Heath and Heather.Heath and Heather
We have found a yellow flower and a blue one on the Chase, and now we have not far to look for something red. Here is a clump of Heath or Ling, and not far off a patch of Heather too. We must be careful to distinguish Heath from Heather; let us look at the Heath first.
On the Heath, as on the Hairbell, we find bell-shaped flowers; but the blossoms of the Heath are very small, and grow from a tough woody stem. They are a reddish-purple. On little side branches growing from the stems are the very tiny leaves. The whole plant is low, bushy, and spreading.
The flowers of the Heather are rather larger, deep crimson in colour, and grow in clusters. On the flower stems grow very small narrow leaves; there are generally three of them together and they do not grow so thickly as the leaves of Heath. Among these leaves are some that are made up of several leaflets.Gorse, Heather, and Heath are spreading plants, and, if they were allowed to grow unchecked, they would soon smother and destroy the turf. Every few years therefore the Chase is burnt. In winter or spring both Gorse and Heath burn easily, the fire spreading fast from one patch to another. The smoke of the burning Chase may then be seen from many miles away.When the fire has burnt out, the Chase looks very black and dismal. But the roots and underground stems of both the Heather and the Gorse are still alive. Fresh shoots will grow, and soon the Gorse will be golden in the spring, the Heather purple in the summer, as they were before.
This is the last day that we can spend in looking for wild flowers at Willow Farm. Perhaps some of you already knew something about flowers before this visit. If so, you may have been disappointed that we have not seen some favourite flower of your own. You may think we have passed over many flowers which deserved to be noticed.For that matter I thinkeverywild flower deserves to be noticed; but we certainly should not have time for all. I showed you several plants growing on the walls and roof, because it was interesting to see that quite beautiful flowers, such as the Wallflower and the Houseleek, could grow with very little soil. We looked rather closely at the Clovers and at the Grasses in the hay-field, because these plants are important to the farmer; they are part of his crops. Then, too, we noticed several weeds which do him harm.To-day I am going to take a kind of holiday. I shall show you three flowers, not because they have much to do with the farmer, but because they are great favourites of my own.None of these are very common at Willow Farm, although I know where to find each one. We will go first down the little stony lane which leads from near the foldyard gate to the cottages where the shepherd and the bailiff live. Here we shall find the Alkanet. It is a perennial, and it blossoms here year after year. I only know one other place in the village where it grows. Like some other flowers we have seen, it is not really a native of England.It has a very beautiful blue blossom, a little like the blossom of the Forget-me-not which perhaps you know, but the flower of the Alkanet is of a deeper, richer blue. Here again, as with so many other flowers we have seen, the blossom is formed of the five lobes of a corolla. In the centre of each blue blossom is a small white spot.The blossoms grow in little clusters on a short stalk, and on this stalk there is always one pair of small leaves. The leaves on the main stems of the plant are larger; the lower leaves have stalks, but those on the upper part of the stem are sessile. The leaves are hairy, and so are the stems, which often grow two or three feet high.We saw that the Poppy and the Pimpernel were the only two truescarletwild flowers of our fields. In the same way there is only one other English wild flower which has such adeep blueblossom as the Alkanet. That is the Borage; and the Borage, like the Alkanet, is not really a native of England. For a fine golden yellow flower I do not know anything which can beat the Dandelion. If we have not seeneverywild flower which grows at Willow Farm, we have at any rate seen three which have the deepest and richest colours.Now for my next favourite. This time we go to the shady lane leading from Willow Farm to the church; that is the only place near here where I have found the Lesser Periwinkle. There is also a Larger Periwinkle, very similar to my favourite here, except in size.Lesser Periwinkle.Lesser Periwinkle
To find the Periwinkle in full flower we should have to come in spring, but, though it is July now, we shall still find a blossom here and there, I hope. Even in winter we might do so too.The Lesser Periwinkle has a blue flower, but the blue is a pale lilac blue. Here again the petals are really the five spreading lobes of the corolla. There is something curious about these lobes. They are of a peculiar irregular shape that is not easy to describe; they are not exactly pointed, and they are not regular in shape. You could cut the petal of a Buttercup into two equal parts; it would be almost impossible to do this with the lobes of the Periwinkle blossom.The leaves are dark green, glossy and pointed, and they grow in pairs. Often, however, we find two pairs of leaves growing so closely together that they seem to grow in fours. The leaves are evergreen; they do not fade and die in autumn.Foxglove.Foxglove
Some of the Periwinkle stems are erect and are about six inches high; others are creeping. It is only the erect stems which bear flowers; the creeping ones are barren. They do useful work, however, for they form fresh roots, as we have seen the stalks of some other plants do. In this way the whole bank beside the lane has become covered with the pretty plant.The Periwinkle is a comparatively small plant. The last flower--the Foxglove--that we shall see at Willow Farm is quite different. It is a very tall plant. It is generally described as growing from three to five feet high, but I have seen a stem of eight or nine feet. We shall find it growing on the hedgebank in Little Orchard, and it also often grows in woods.
Some plants, as we know, are annuals, others are perennials. The Foxglove is neither; it is a biennial--that is a two years' plant. If you sow Foxglove seed you will have no flowers the first year, only a root and a great bunch of leaves. In the second year tall stems which bear the flowers will appear. In the autumn after it has flowered the Foxglove generally dies, though sometimes it may live for another year, or even two. Foxgloves, of course, will reproduce themselves by seed, as annuals and perennials do.The Foxglove is something different from anything that we have seen as yet. The flowers grow on short flower stalks and hang down from the tall stems, a great many on each stem. Here there are no petals, but what we see and admire so much is the bell-shaped corolla, purple-red in colour. This purple bell is spotted with white inside. Bell-shaped is perhaps not a very good description; the flower is more like a large thimble or the finger of a glove."A glove for a fox--that is the meaning of the name," you perhaps say. No, it has nothing to do with a fox. Many years ago nearly everyone believed in Fairies, and the Fairies were often called the Good Folk or Good People. It is they, and not the fox, who were supposed to use the purple blossoms as a glove. If you say "Folk's Glove" quickly, you will see how easily it comes to sound Foxglove. So our last thought among the flowers is of the Fairies, in whose existence hardly anyone believes to-day.