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Flowers of the Farm

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<h2> CHAPTER IV</h2> <h3>THREE HANDSOME WEEDS</h3> At the end of the drive, near the front door, another white gate leads to the "nag" stables, where Mr. Hammond keeps the two horses which he rides and drives. Billy, the old brown pony, has a little stable of his own close by, and further on are the granary and the poultry yard. Perhaps you have heard the saying, "Ill weeds grow apace." It is certainly a true one, for most of the plants which we call weeds grow quickly and well wherever they are allowed to remain. We shall not have far to look for the three weeds which I want to show you this morning. The first of them is the Stinging Nettle. It grows round the wood-pile in the middle of the poultry-yard, and there are great clumps of it beside the hedge which divides the poultry-yard from the kitchen garden. It is really a very handsome plant, though you may not have thought so before. Look how tall and straight the stems are, and how evenly and regularly the dark green pointed leaves grow from it. They grow in pairs, on opposite sides of the stem, and are serrated. There is something rather unusual about the stem of the Nettle which we will notice at once. I have brought out a pair of thick leather gloves, so that we can pick a stem without being stung. You know what shape the trunks of trees are. Round? Yes; round or nearly so. So are the stems of most plants; the stems of the Red Valerian are round. The stem of the Nettle, however, is square, or if not perfectly square, it has four distinct sides. Perhaps you had never noticed this before, for the Nettle is certainly not a plant with which one cares to have very much to do. Both the stems and leaves are covered with tiny hairs. These hairs are really small hollow tubes ending in a sharp point. When the Nettle stings you it first pricks the skin with these sharp points, and then a drop of poison falls from the tube into the wound the point has made. If you happen to get stung by a nettle do not bathe your hand with cold water; that will only make the pain worse. While you are waiting for the pain to pass off remember that in India there are nettles whose sting causes great pain which lasts for several days. You might be much worse off, you see! The small greenish-yellow flowers of the Stinging Nettle grow in long feathery clusters on stalks which spring from the main stem close to a pair of leaves. The young leaves of the Nettle are said to be very nice boiled as vegetables; I cannot say that I have ever eaten them myself. Years ago country people used to take a great deal of nettle tea as medicine in spring. Nowadays they seem to prefer patent medicines from the chemist's shop. A dye is made from the roots of the Nettle, and another dye from the stem and leaves. The young leaves or tops, when chopped up, are good for poultry, especially for turkeys. So nettles are useful, you see--not merely stinging weeds. The Nettle, too, is a relation of the hemp plant from which we get our string and ropes. You may sometimes see or hear of the White, Red, and Yellow Dead Nettle, but these are not really nettles at all. Their leaves are somewhat similar, but they are quite different plants. <table summary="" style="float: right"> <tr align="center"> <td style="border: none"> <ANTIMG border="0" src="images/033s.jpg" width-obs="158" height-obs="131" alt="Traveller's Joy."> </tr> <tr align="center"> <td>Traveller's Joy</td> </tr> </table> Hanging over this great patch of nettles by the hedge there is another weed, the Traveller's Joy, or Old Man's Beard. Its stem has climbed not only up the hedge, but high into a hawthorn bush which stands there. It has many small white feathery flowers with a pleasant scent. On each leaf stem there are usually five leaflets, one at the end of the stem and two pairs lower down. These leaf stems are long and tough, and it is chiefly by them that the plant can climb as it does; they twine round any branch or twig they touch, and give the Traveller's Joy a firm support. I have seen trees in woods covered with this plant to a height of twenty feet from the ground. In the autumn and early winter you would admire the Traveller's Joy as much as you do now. The flowers will certainly be gone, but each seed which takes the place of a blossom will have a little plume of silky white threads attached to it--a sort of feathery tail. These serve as wings by which the seeds are often carried long distances by the wind. The seeds of some other plants which we shall see have something of the same kind. There is another climbing plant in the hedge, the Large Bindweed or Convolvulus. To look at it, however, we will go round into the garden where there is more of it than Mrs. Hammond cares to see. It is certainly a beautiful plant, with its large three-sided pointed leaves, and its great pure white bell-shaped flowers--something like the mouth of a trumpet. <table summary="" style="float: left"> <tr align="center"> <td style="border: none"> <ANTIMG border="0" src="images/035s.jpg" width-obs="154" height-obs="230" alt="Large Bindweed."> </tr> <tr align="center"> <td>Large Bindweed</td> </tr> </table> In the farmhouse garden, however, it is certainly a weed--a plant in the wrong place. We see that at once. Close to the hedge are some gooseberry and currant bushes, and into these the Bindweed has climbed. The Bindweed's stems are twined round the stems and branches of the bushes till they are almost hidden by it, and are bent down by the weight. The Bindweed climbs, as we see, by twisting its stem round the tree to which it clings; but though it is a climbing plant its stems can grow for a foot or more from the ground without support. Some of the shoots of the Bindweed are two or three feet away from the stems of the fruit bushes, but they have grown unsupported till they could reach an overhanging bough and cling to that. Every now and then, Dan, who looks after the garden when he has time, cuts oft all the Bindweed close to the ground, and pulls some of it up by the roots; but fresh shoots soon appear again. It is of little use to dig up the ground near the bushes, for the Bindweed is twisted all among their roots. You think the Bindweed and the Traveller's Joy beautiful flowers, and so they are. At the same time these plants are far more troublesome and dangerous weeds than the Stinging Nettle. Nearly all plants that cling to other plants do harm; they prevent the stems and boughs to which they cling from swelling freely. See how tightly the Bindweed stems are twisted round the boughs of this currant bush. Ivy, Bindweed, and other clinging plants often kill or seriously injure valuable trees in this way. <hr>     <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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