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Call of the Wildflower

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<h2>XX</h2> <h3>SOME MARSH-DWELLERS</h3> Here are cool mosses deep. Tennyson. What Thoreau wrote of his Massachusetts swamps is hardly less true of ours; a marsh is everywhere a great allurement for botanists. By a road which crosses a certain Sussex Common there is a church, and close behind the church a narrow swampy piece of ground known as "the great bog," which has all the appearance of being waste and valueless; yet whenever I visit the place I think of Thoreau's words: "My temple is the swamp." For that bog, ignored or despised by the dwellers round the Common, except when a horse or a cow gets stuck in it and has to be hauled out with ropes, is sacred ground to the flower-lover, as being the home not only of a number of characteristic plants—lesser skull-cap, sun-dew, bog-bean, bog-asphodel, marsh St. John's-wort, and the scarcer species of marsh bedstraw—but of one of our rarest and most beautiful gentians, the Calathian violet, known and esteemed by the old herbalists as the "marsh-felwort."[Pg 145] The attention of anyone whose thoughts are attuned to flowers must at once be arrested by the colouring of this splendid plant, for its large funnel-shaped blossoms are of the rich gentian blue, striped with green bands, and as it grows not in the bog itself, but on the close-adjoining banks of heather, it is easily accessible. Yet fortunately, in the locality of which I am speaking, it seems to be untouched by those who cross the Common. On the afternoon in early September when I first found the place, a number of children were blackberrying there, and I dreaded every moment to see them turn aside to pick a bunch of the gentians, which doubtless would soon have been thrown aside to wither, as is the fate of so many spring flowers; but though the blue petals were conspicuous in the heather they were left entirely unmolested. For this merciful abstinence there were probably two reasons: one that the flower-picking habit is exhausted before the autumn; the other that the gentians, however beautiful, are not among the recognized favourites—daffodils, primroses, violets, forget-me-nots, and the like—that by long custom have taken hold of the imagination of childhood. Had it been otherwise, this rare little annual could hardly have survived so long. In botanical usage there seems to be no difference between the terms "marsh" and "bog," nor need we, I think, follow the rather strained distinction drawn by Anne Pratt, a writer who, though belonging[Pg 146] to a somewhat wordy and sentimental school, and indulging in a good deal of what might be called "Anne-prattle," had so real a love of her subject that her best book, Haunts of the Wild Flowers, affords very agreeable reading. "The distinction between a bog and a marsh," she says, "is simply that the latter is more wet, and that the foot sinks in; while on a bog the soft soil, though it yields to the pressure of the foot, rises again." The definition itself seems hardly to be based on terra firma; but we can fully agree with the writer's conclusion that, at the worst, an adventurous botanist "is often rewarded for the temporary chill by the beauty of the plant which he has gathered." That is a consolation which I have not seldom enjoyed. But a pleasanter name, in my opinion, than either "marsh" or "bog," is one which is common in the Lake District, and in the northern counties generally, viz. "a moss." It sounds cool and comforting. I recall an occasion when, in the course of a visit to the Newton Regny moss, near Penrith, "the foot sank in," and a good deal more than the foot; but the acquaintance then made for the first time with that giant of the ranunculus order, the great spearwort, was sufficient recompense, for who would complain of a wetting when he met with a buttercup four feet in stature? It so happened, however, that the plant in whose quest I had ventured on the precarious surface of the Newton Regny moss—the great bladderwort[Pg 147]—was not to be found on that occasion, though it is reported to make a fine show there in August; possibly, in an early season, it had already finished its flowering, and had sunk, after the inconsiderate manner of its tribe, to the bottom of the pools. Nor did I see its rarer sister, the lesser bladderwort; with whom indeed I have only once had the pleasure of meeting, and that was in a rather awkward place, a deep pond lying close below a railway-bank, and overlooked by the windows of the passing trains, so that I not only had to swim for a flower, but to consult a time-table before swimming, in order to avoid having a "gallery" at the moment when seclusion was desired. Our North-country "mosses" are indeed temples to the flower-lover, by virtue both of the rarer species that inhabit them, and of the unbroken succession of beautiful plants that they maintain, from the rich gold of the globe-flower in early summer to the exquisite purity of the grass of Parnassus in autumn. Among these bog-plants there is one which to me is very fascinating, though writers are often content to describe its strange purple blossoms as "dingy"—I allude to that wilder relative of the wild strawberry, the marsh-cinquefoil, which, though rather local, is in habit decidedly gregarious. For several years it had eluded me in a Carnarvonshire valley; until one day, wandering by the riverside, I came upon a swampy expanse where it was growing in hundreds, remarkable both for the deep rusty hue[Pg 148] of its petals, and for the large strawberry-like fruit that was just beginning to form. Apart from the more extensive "mosses," the lower slopes of the mountains, both in Cumberland and Wales, are often rich in flowers unsuspected by the wayfarer, who, keeping to some upland track, sees nothing on either side but bare peaty moors that appear to be entirely barren. And barren in many cases they are. You may wander for miles and not see a flower; then suddenly perhaps, on rounding a rock, you will find yourself in one of these natural gardens in the wilderness, where the ground is pink with red rattle growing so thickly as to hide the grass; or white with spotted orchis, handsomer and in greater abundance than is dreamed of in the south; or, a still more glorious sight, tinged over large spaces with the yellow of the bog-asphodel, a plant which is beautiful in its fruit as well as its flower, for when the blossoms are passed the dry wiry stems turn to deep orange. Sun-dews are everywhere; the quaint and affable butterwort is plastered over the wet rocks; and the marsh St. John's-wort, so unlike the rest of its family that the relationship is not always recognized, is frequent in the spongy pools. Here and there, a small patch of pink on the grey heath, will be seen the delicate bog-pimpernel, which might take rank as the fairest flower of the marsh, were it not that the diminutive ivy-leaved campanula is also trailing its fairy-like form through[Pg 149] the wet grasses, among which it might wholly escape notice unless search were made for it. To realize the perfection of its beauty—the exquisite structure of its small green leaves, slender thread-like stems, and bells of palest blue—you must go down on your knees to examine it, however damp the ground; a fitting act of homage to one of the loveliest of Flora's children. Better cultivation, preceded by improved drainage, is ceaselessly encroaching on our marshlands and lessening the number of their flowers. The charming little cranberry, for instance, once so plentiful that it came to market in wagonloads from the fens of the eastern counties, is now far from common; and our cranberry-tarts have to be supplied from oversea. But much more ravishing than the red berries are the rose-coloured flowers, though they are known to scarcely one in a thousand of the persons familiar with the fruit. I always think with pleasure of the day when I first saw them, on the Whinlatter pass, near Keswick, their small wiry stems creeping on the surface of the swamp, a feast for an epicure's eye. It is under the open air, not under a pie-crust, that such dainties are appreciated as they deserve. These, then, being some of the many attractions offered by our "mosses," is it surprising that the lover of flowers should play the part of a modern "moss-trooper," and ride out over the border in search for such imperishable spoil? His part,[Pg 150] indeed, is a much wiser one than that of the old freebooters; for who would risk life in the forcible lifting of other persons' cattle, when at the slight expense to which Anne Pratt alluded—the temporary chill caused by the sinking of his foot in a marsh—he can enrich himself far more agreeably in the manner which I have described?[Pg 151] <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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