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Call of the Wildflower

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<h2>XII</h2> <h3>HERTFORDSHIRE CORNFIELDS</h3> A gaily chequered, heart-expanding view, Far as the circling eye can shoot around, Unbounded tossing in a flood of corn. Thomson. That part of Hertfordshire where the Chiltern Hills, after curving proudly round from Tring to Dunstable, and almost rivalling the South Downs in shapeliness, die away at their north-east extremity, over Hitchin, to a bare expanse of ploughland, has the aspect of a broad plain swept by all winds of heaven, but is found, when explored, to be by no means devoid of charm. There, by a paradox, the very extent of the great hedgeless cornfields, reclaimed from the wild, gives the landscape a sort of wildness; it is in fact the district whence the Royston crow got its name, that hooded outlaw to whose survival a wide tract of open country was indispensable; and there is a pleasure in wandering over it which is unguessed by the traveller who rushes through in an express to Cambridge, and marvels at the tameness of the land.[Pg 91] The wildflowers of cultivated fields are as distinctive as those of heath or hillside. It would be difficult to name any two more beautiful "weeds" than the succory and the corn "blue-bottle"—the light blue and the dark blue; both have deservedly won their "blues"—and when to these is added the corn-cockle (lychnis githago), the rich veined purple of its petals set off by the long pointed green sepals and leaves, what handsomer trio could be wished? Unhappily these flowers have become much scarcer than they used to be; but in the Hertfordshire fields they are still frequently to be admired. The intensive culture of which we nowadays hear so much has this drawback for the botanist, that it is robbing him of some plants which he is very loth to lose. The most striking of these, perhaps, is that quaint "perfoliate" of which I have already spoken, the thorow-wax or hare's-ear, which in Gerarde's time was so plentiful in the wheatland as to be what he calls its "infirmitie": now it is decidedly rare. I have never been so fortunate (except in dreams) as to see it in situ; but I have for several years grown it from the seed of a specimen gathered by a friend in the cornfields near Baldock, and have always been impressed by its elegance. It is a delicate and fastidious plant, thriving only, as I have noticed, when the conditions are quite favourable: this may account for its steady diminution in many counties, while coarser and hardier weeds are legion. A more abiding "infirmitie" of some Hertfordshire[Pg 92] cornfields is the crow-garlic, a wild onion whose pink umbels often surmount the crop in hundreds. Wishing to learn their local name, I once asked a farm-hand at Letchworth what he called the flowers. After gazing at them sternly, he said to me: "They're not flowers. They're a disease." I suggested that whatever their demerits might be from the point of view of an agriculturist, they must, strictly speaking, be regarded as flowers: this he grudgingly conceded; but as if regretting to have made so large an admission, he called after me, as I left him: "They're a disease." His pertinacity on this point reminded me of the reaffirmations of Old Kaspar, in Southey's poem, "After Blenheim": "Nay, nay" ... quoth he, "It was a famous victory." The crow-garlic, as it happens, is rather a pretty plant; and the opprobrious name "disease" might be much more suitably assigned to the tall broom-rape, an unwholesome-looking parasite which lives rapaciously at the expense of the great knapweed, and is occasionally met with in the district of which I am speaking. An extremely local umbellifer, said to have been formerly so abundant about Baldock that pigs were turned out to fatten on its roots, is the bulbous caraway, which looks like a larger edition of the common earth-nut. None of the country-folk whom I questioned seemed to have any knowledge of its[Pg 93] uses; from which it would appear that its virtues, like those of many once famous herbs, have been forgotten in these sceptical modern times. It is well, perhaps, that carum bulbocastanum should be saved from the pigs; for in that unlovely region its white umbels serve to lighten up the monotony of the waysides. An unexpected discovery is always welcome. In a waste field, about a mile from Royston, I once found a tall branching plant with an abundance of yellow cruciferous flowers, which I should not have recognized but for the fact that a year or two previously my friend Edward Carpenter had sent me a specimen from Corsica. It was the woad, famous as the source of the blue dye with which the ancient Britons stained themselves. A mere "casual" in Hertfordshire, it is said to be established in a few chalk-quarries near Guildford and elsewhere. Thus far I have spoken of none but field flowers; but the district does not consist wholly of cultivated land, for even in that wilderness of tillage there are oases which have never felt the plough, and where the flora is of a different order. Therfield Heath, near Royston, is one of them, a grassy slope where the handsome purple milk-vetch is plentiful, and one may find, though in less abundance, the sprightly field fleawort, which seems more familiar as an ornament of the high chalk Downs. Nor are water springs wanting in the bare ploughlands. The little river Ivel, which leaps suddenly[Pg 94] to light near Baldock, and thence races northward to join the Bedfordshire Ouse, is a clear trout-stream by whose banks it is pleasant (whatever the trespass notices may threaten) to wander, and to watch the quick-glancing fish. At the hamlet of Radwell, in a moist copse, there is a patch of the rare monk's-hood, a poisonous flower of which later mention will be made. A joint tributary of the Ouse, and not less inviting, is the oddly named Hiz, which has its source on Oughton Common, a boggy flat near Hitchin, where both the butterwort and the grass of Parnassus are recorded as having grown and may perchance be growing still: as for the marsh orchis, one cannot cross the Common without seeing it. Then at Ickleford, a village on the banks of the Hiz, there is a pond which has been "occupied" (to use a military term) by the water-soldier, a stout aquatic which takes its name from the rigid swordlike leaves enclosing the three-petaled flowers. Peculiar to the eastern counties, this water-soldier is said to have been introduced at Ickleford over half a century ago; and there it now makes a fine array, having thriven wonderfully in spite of the worn-out pots and pans, and other refuse, for which, in Hertfordshire as elsewhere, the nearest pool or stream is thought a fit receptacle. A mile or two west of the source of the Hiz at Oughton Head, stands High Down, where begins or ends, according to the direction of the wayfarer, the northern escarpment of the Chilterns, at this[Pg 95] point crossed, recrossed, and crossed again, by the curiously indented boundary-line between Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire; and here on the steep front of the Pirton and Barton hills, in the one county or the other, may be seen in early spring the most beautiful of English anemones, the pasque-flower. On the few occasions when I have visited the place the summer was well advanced, and I was too late for that gorgeous flower; I had to content myself with the pyramidal orchis at the foot of the hills, and with great blossoming sheets of white candytuft in the fields above. For all these excursions there is no better starting-point than Letchworth, first of Garden Cities, which has sprung rapidly into being from what was until recent years an unadorned expanse of agricultural ground with Norton Common as its centre. This Common, originally a bit of wild fen, now almost surrounded by cottages and gardens, is to the nature-lover the most attractive feature of Letchworth; and though its flora has inevitably suffered from the inroads of the juvenile population, it can still show such plants as the marsh orchis, the small valerian, and the rare sulphur-coloured trefoil. It is watered by a diminutive river—the unceremonious might say ditch—known as the Pix, whose current, like that of the Cam, would almost seem to be determined by the direction of the wind, but is reputed to flow northward, to join its fleeter brethren, the Hiz and the Ivel, in their course to the Ouse.[Pg 96] I mention this rather forlorn stream, because it has sometimes occurred to me that, as an attempt is made to protect the wild birds on Norton Common, it might be expedient to lend a helping hand also to the flowers, or even to embellish the banks of the Pix (and so to re-invite the pixies to sport thereby), with a few hardy riverside plants, such as comfrey, tansy, hemp-agrimony, purple loosestrife, and yellow loosestrife, which were probably once native there, and would almost certainly flourish in such a spot. Is it legitimate thus to come to the rescue of wild nature? That is a question on which botanists are not quite agreed, and its consideration shall therefore be reserved for the following chapter.[Pg 97] <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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