Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1884 edition. Excerpt: ... III. STRA WBERRIES. Side by side in our English hedgerows in early springtime there grow two sister plants, almost exactly alike in foliage, flower, and all other points except the fruit, but differing widely from one another in that solitary, and to us essential, particular. One of these plants is the wild strawberry, the other is the little three leaved, white potentilla. It is not often that a parent species and its more developed offspring survive together in the same district, but this is almost certainly the case with these two small English wayside flowers. Indeed, the similarity between them is so close that even the most unobservant passers-by have been greatly struck with it; and the common native English name of the white potentilla--' barren strawberry'--bears witness to the striking character of the family likeness. Perhaps one ought rather to go a step further, and to say that, while the most unobservant have perceived the relationship, only the more observant have ever discovered the distinctness of the two plants. Nothing is more ordinary than to hear casual townsfolk exclaim that though there were lots of strawberry blossoms a little while ago in suchand-such a spot, there are no ripe strawberries to be seen now that the time has come for picking the fruit. In such cases, careful examination will generally show that the spot is really covered by white potentilla plants, whose little starry flowers were easily mistaken by the world at large for true strawberry blossom. Though there are some marked distinctive features even in the flower, to which I shall presently recur, it is in the fruit alone that the two plants really differ sufficiently to attract the attention of an unbotanical eye. But here the difference is one...