Proserpina, Volume 2

CHAPTER III

VERONICA

1. "The Corolla of the Foxglove," says Dr. Lindley, beginning his account of the tribe at page 195 of the first volume of his 'Ladies' Botany,' "is a large inflated body(!), with its throat spotted with rich purple, and its border divided obliquely into five very short lobes, of which the two upper are the smaller; its four stamens are of unequal length, and its style is divided into two lobes at the upper end. A number of long hairs cover the ovary, which contains two cells and a great quantity of ovules.

"This" (sc. information) "will show you what is the usual character of the Foxglove tribe; and you will find that all the other genera referred to it in books agree with it essentially, although they differ in subordinate points. It is chiefly (A) in the form of the corolla, (B) in the number of the stamens, (C) in the consistence of the rind of the fruit, (D) in its form, (E) in the number of the seeds it contains, and (F) in the manner in which the sepals are combined, that these differences consist."

2. The enumerative letters are of my insertion—otherwise the above sentence is, word for word, Dr. Lindley's,—and it seems to me an interesting and memorable one in the history of modern Botanical science. For it appears from the tenor of it, that in a scientific botanist's mind, six particulars, at least, in the character of a plant, are merely 'subordinate points,'—namely,

1. (F) The combination of its calyx,

2. (A) The shape of its corolla,

3. (B) The number of its stamens,

4. (D) The form of its fruit,

5. (C) The consistence of its shell,—and

6. (E) The number of seeds in it.

Abstracting, then, from the primary description, all the six inessential points, I find the three essential ones left are, that the style is divided into two lobes at the upper end, that a number of glandular hairs cover the ovary, and that this latter contains two cells.

3. None of which particulars concern any reasonable mortal, looking at a Foxglove, in the smallest degree. Whether hairs which he can't see are glandular or bristly,—whether the green knobs, which are left when the purple bells are gone, are divided into two lobes or two hundred,—and whether the style is split, like a snake's tongue, into two lobes, or like a rogue's, into any number—are merely matters of vulgar curiosity, which he needs a microscope to discover, and will lose a day of his life in discovering. But if any pretty young Proserpina, escaped from the Plutonic durance of London, and carried by the tubular process, which replaces Charon's boat, over the Lune at Lancaster, cares to come and walk on the Coniston hills in a summer morning, when the eyebright is out on the high fields, she may gather, with a little help from Brantwood garden, a bouquet of the entire Foxglove tribe in flower, as it is at present defined, and may see what they are like, altogether.

4. She shall gather: first, the Euphrasy, which makes the turf on the brow of the hill glitter as if with new-fallen manna; then, from one of the blue clusters on the top of the garden wall, the common bright blue Speedwell; and, from the garden bed beneath, a dark blue spire of Veronica spicata; then, at the nearest opening into the wood, a little foxglove in its first delight of shaking out its bells; then—what next does the Doctor say?—a snapdragon? we must go back into the garden for that—here is a goodly crimson one, but what the little speedwell will think of him for a relative I can't think!—a mullein?—that we must do without for the moment; a monkey flower?—that we will do without, altogether; a lady's slipper?—say rather a goblin's with the gout! but, such as the flower-cobbler has made it, here is one of the kind that people praise, out of the greenhouse,—and yet a figwort we must have, too; which I see on referring to Loudon, may be balm-leaved, hemp-leaved, tansy-leaved, nettle-leaved, wing-leaved, heart-leaved, ear-leaved, spear-leaved, or lyre-leaved. I think I can find a balm-leaved one, though I don't know what to make of it when I've got it, but it's called a 'Scorodonia' in Sowerby, and something very ugly besides;—I'll put a bit of Teucrium Scorodonia in, to finish: and now—how will my young Proserpina arrange her bouquet, and rank the family relations to their contentment?

5. She has only one kind of flowers—in her hand, as botanical classification stands at present; and whether the system be more rational, or in any human sense more scientific, which puts calceolaria and speedwell together,—and foxglove and euphrasy; and runs them on one side into the mints, and on the other into the nightshades;—naming them, meanwhile, some from diseases, some from vermin, some from blockheads, and the rest anyhow:—or the method I am pleading for, which teaches us, watchful of their seasonable return and chosen abiding places, to associate in our memory the flowers which truly resemble, or fondly companion, or, in time kept by the signs of Heaven, succeed, each other; and to name them in some historical connection with the loveliest fancies and most helpful faiths of the ancestral world—Proserpina be judge; with every maid that sets flowers on brow or breast—from Thule to Sicily.

6. We will unbind our bouquet, then, and putting all the rest of its flowers aside, examine the range and nature of the little blue cluster only.

And first—we have to note of it, that the plan of the blossom in all the kinds is the same; an irregular quatre-foil: and irregular quatrefoils are of extreme rarity in flower form. I don't myself know one, except the Veronica. The cruciform vegetables—the heaths, the olives, the lilacs, the little Tormentillas, and the poppies, are all perfectly symmetrical. Two of the petals, indeed, as a rule, are different from the other two, except in the heaths; and thus a distinctly crosslet form obtained, but always an equally balanced one: while in the Veronica, as in the Violet, the blossom always refers itself to a supposed place on the stalk with respect to the ground; and the upper petal is always the largest.

The supposed place is often very suppositious indeed—for clusters of the common veronicas, if luxuriant, throw their blossoms about anywhere. But the idea of an upper and lower petal is always kept in the flower's little mind.

7. In the second place, it is a quite open and flat quatrefoil—so separating itself from the belled quadrature of the heath, and the tubed and primrose-like quadrature of the cruciferæ; and, both as a quatrefoil, and as an open one, it is separated from the foxgloves and snapdragons, which are neither quatrefoils, nor open; but are cinqfoils shut up!

8. In the third place, open and flat though the flower be, it is monopetalous; all the four arms of the cross strictly becoming one in the centre; so that, though the blue foils look no less sharply separate than those of a buttercup or a cistus; and are so delicate that one expects them to fall from their stalk if we breathe too near,—do but lay hold of one,—and, at the touch, the entire blossom is lifted from its stalk, and may be laid, in perfect shape, on our paper before us, as easily as if it had been a nicely made-up blue bonnet, lifted off its stand by the milliner.

I pause here, to consider a little; because I find myself mixing up two characteristics which have nothing necessary in their relation;—namely, the unity of the blossom, and its coming easily off the stalk. The separate petals of the cistus and cherry fall as easily as the foxglove drops its bells;—on the other hand, there are monopetalous things that don't drop, but hold on like the convoluta,[19 - I find much more difficulty, myself, being old, in using my altered names for species than my young scholars will. In watching the bells of the purple bindweed fade at evening, let them learn the fourth verse of the prayer of Hezekiah, as it is in the Vulgate—"Generatio mea ablata est, et convoluta est a me, sicut tabernaculum pastoris,"—and they will not forget the name of the fast-fading—ever renewed—"belle d'un jour."] and make the rest of the tree sad for their dying. I do not see my way to any systematic noting of decadent or persistent corolla; but, in passing, we may thank the veronica for never allowing us to see how it fades,[20 - "It is Miss Cobbe, I think, who says 'all wild flowers know how to die gracefully.'"—A.] and being always cheerful and lovely, while it is with us.

9. And for a farther specialty, I think we should take note of the purity and simplicity of its floral blue, not sprinkling itself with unwholesome sugar like a larkspur, nor varying into coppery or turquoise-like hue as the forget-me-not; but keeping itself as modest as a blue print, pale, in the most frequent kinds; but pure exceedingly; and rejoicing in fellowship with the grey of its native rocks. The palest of all I think it will be well to remember as Veronica Clara, the "Poor Clare" of Veronicas. I find this note on it in my diary,—

'The flower of an exquisite grey-white, like lichen, or shaded hoar-frost, or dead silver; making the long-weathered stones it grew upon perfect with a finished modesty of paleness, as if the flower could be blue, and would not, for their sake. Laying its fine small leaves along in embroidery, like Anagallis tenella,—indescribable in the tender feebleness of it—afterwards as it grew, dropping the little blossoms from the base of the spire, before the buds at the top had blown. Gathered, it was happy beside me, with a little water under a stone, and put out one pale blossom after another, day by day.'

10. Lastly, and for a high worthiness, in my estimate, note that it is wild, of the wildest, and proud in pure descent of race; submitting itself to no follies of the cur-breeding florist. Its species, though many resembling each other, are severally constant in aspect, and easily recognizable; and I have never seen it provoked to glare into any gigantic impudence at a flower show. Fortunately, perhaps, it is scentless, and so despised.

11. Before I attempt arranging its families, we must note that while the corolla itself is one of the most constant in form, and so distinct from all other blossoms that it may be always known at a glance; the leaves and habit of growth vary so greatly in families of different climates, and those born for special situations, moist or dry, and the like, that it is quite impossible to characterize Veronic, or Veronique, vegetation in general terms. One can say, comfortably, of a strawberry, that it is a creeper, without expecting at the next moment to see a steeple of strawberry blossoms rise to contradict us;—we can venture to say of a foxglove that it grows in a spire, without any danger of finding, farther on, a carpet of prostrate and entangling digitalis; and we may pronounce of a buttercup that it grows mostly in meadows, without fear of finding ourselves, at the edge of the next thicket, under the shadow of a buttercup-bush growing into valuable timber. But the Veronica reclines with the lowly,[21 - See distinction between recumbent and rampant herbs, below, under 'Veronica Agrestis,' p. 72 (#x2_x_2_i107).] upon occasion, and aspires, with the proud; is here the pleased companion of the ground-ivies, and there the unrebuked rival of the larkspurs: on the rocks of Coniston it effaces itself almost into the film of a lichen; it pierces the snows of Iceland with the gentian: and in the Falkland Islands is a white-blossomed evergreen, of which botanists are in dispute whether it be Veronica or Olive.

12. Of these many and various forms, I find the manners and customs alike inconstant; and this of especially singular in them—that the Alpine and northern species bloom hardily in contest with the retiring snows, while with us they wait till the spring is past, and offer themselves to us only in consolation for the vanished violet and primrose. As we farther examine the ways of plants, I suppose we shall find some that determine upon a fixed season, and will bloom methodically in June or July, whether in Abyssinia or Greenland; and others, like the violet and crocus, which are flowers of the spring, at whatever time of the favouring or frowning year the spring returns to their country. I suppose also that botanists and gardeners know all these matters thoroughly: but they don't put them into their books, and the clear notions of them only come to me now, as I think and watch.

13. Broadly, however, the families of the Veronica fall into three main divisions,—those which have round leaves lobed at the edge, like ground ivy; those which have small thyme-like leaves; and those which have long leaves like a foxglove's, only smaller—never more than two or two and a half inches long. I therefore take them in these connections, though without any bar between the groups; only separating the Regina from the other thyme-leaved ones, to give her due precedence; and the rest will then arrange themselves into twenty families, easily distinguishable and memorable.

FIG. IV.

I have chosen for Veronica Regina, the brave Icelandic one, which pierces the snow in first spring, with lovely small shoots of perfectly set leaves, no larger than a grain of wheat; the flowers in a lifted cluster of five or six together, not crowded, yet not loose; large, for veronica—about the size of a silver penny, or say half an inch across—deep blue, with ruby centre.

My woodcut, Fig. 4, is outlined[22 - 'Abstracted' rather, I should have said, and with perfect skill, by Mr. Collingwood (the joint translator of Xenophon's Economics for the 'Bibliotheca Pastorum'). So also the next following cut, Fig. 5.] from the beautiful engraving D. 342,[23 - Of the references, henceforward necessary to the books I have used as authorities, the reader will please note the following abbreviations:—]—there called 'fruticulosa,' from the number of the young shoots.

14. Beneath the Regina, come the twenty easily distinguished families, namely:—

1. Chamædrys. 'Ground-oak.' I cannot tell why so called—its small and rounded leaves having nothing like oak leaves about them, except the serration, which is common to half, at least, of all leaves that grow. But the idea is all over Europe, apparently. Fr. 'petit chêne:' German and English 'Germander,' a merely corrupt form of Chamædrys.

The representative English veronica "Germander Speedwell"—very prettily drawn in S. 986; too tall and weed-like in D. 448.

2. Hederifolia. Ivy-leaved: but more properly, cymbalaria-leaved. It is the English field representative, though blue-flowered, of the Byzantine white veronica, V. Cymbalaria, very beautifully drawn in G. 9. Hederifolia well in D. 428.

3. Agrestis. Fr. 'Rustique.' We ought however clearly to understand whether 'agrestis,' used by English botanists, is meant to imply a literally field flower, or only a 'rustic' one, which might as properly grow in a wood. I shall always myself use 'agrestis' in the literal sense, and 'rustica' for 'rustique.' I see no reason, in the present case, for separating the Polite from the Rustic flower: the agrestis, D. 449 and S. 971, seems to me not more meekly recumbent, nor more frankly cultureless, than the so-called Polita, S. 972: there seems also no French acknowledgment of its politeness, and the Greek family, G. 8, seem the rudest and wildest of all.

Quite a field flower it is, I believe, lying always low on the ground; recumbent, but not creeping. Note this difference: no fastening roots are thrown out by the reposing stems of this Veronica; a creeping or accurately 'rampant' plant roots itself in advancing. Conf. Nos. 5, 6.

4. Arvensis. We have yet to note a still finer distinction in epithet. 'Agrestis' will properly mean a flower of the open ground—yet not caring whether the piece of earth be cultivated or not, so long as it is under clear sky. But when agri-culture has turned the unfruitful acres into 'arva beata,'—if then the plant thrust itself between the furrows of the plough, it is properly called 'Arvensis.'

I don't quite see my way to the same distinction in English,—perhaps I may get into the habit, as time goes on, of calling the Arvenses consistently furrow-flowers, and the Agrestes field-flowers. Furrow-veronica is a tiresomely long name, but must do for the present, as the best interpretation of its Latin character, "vulgatissima in cultis et arvis." D. 515. The blossom itself is exquisitely delicate; and we may be thankful, both here and in Denmark, for such a lovely 'vulgate.'

5. Montana. D. 1201. The first really creeping plant we have had to notice. It throws out roots from the recumbent stems. Otherwise like agrestis, it has leaves like ground-ivy. Called a wood species in the text of D.

6. Persica. An eastern form, but now perfectly naturalized here—D. 1982; S. 973. The flowers very large, and extremely beautiful, but only one springing from each leaf-axil.

Leaves and stem like Montana; and also creeping with new-roots at intervals.

7. Triphylla, (not triphyllos,—see Flora Suecica, 22). Meaning trifid-leaved; but the leaf is really divided into five lobes, not three—see S. 974, and G. 10. The palmate form of the leaf seems a mere caprice, and indicates no transitional form in the plant: it may be accepted as only a momentary compliment of mimicry to the geraniums. The Siberian variety, 'multifida,' C. 1679, divides itself almost as the submerged leaves of the water-ranunculus.

The triphylla itself is widely diffused, growing alike on the sandy fields of Kent, and of Troy. In D. 627 is given an extremely delicate and minute northern type, the flowers springing as in Persica, one from each leaf-axil, and at distant intervals.

8. Officinalis. D. 248, S. 294. Fr. 'Veronique officinale'; (Germ. Gebrauchlicher Ehrenpreis,) our commonest English and Welsh speedwell; richest in cluster and frankest in roadside growth, whether on bank or rock; but assuredly liking either a bank or a rock, and the top of a wall better than the shelter of one. Uncountable 'myriads,' I am tempted to write, but, cautiously and literally, 'hundreds' of blossoms—if one could count,—ranging certainly towards the thousand in some groups, all bright at once, make our Westmoreland lanes look as if they were decked for weddings, in early summer. In the Danish Flora it is drawn small and poor; its southern type being the true one: but it is difficult to explain the difference between the look of a flower which really suffers, as in this instance, by a colder climate, and becomes mean and weak, as well as dwarfed; and one which is braced and brightened by the cold, though diminished, as if under the charge and charm of an affectionate fairy, and becomes a joyfully patriotic inheritor of wilder scenes and skies. Medicinal, to soul and body alike, this gracious and domestic flower; though astringent and bitter in the juice. It is the Welsh deeply honoured 'Fluellen.'—See final note on the myth of Veronica, see § 18 (#x3_x_3_i19).

9. Thymifolia. Thyme-leaved, G. 6. Of course the longest possible word—serpyllifolia—is used in S. 978. It is a high mountain plant, growing on the top of Crete as the snow retires; and the Veronica minor of Gerarde; "the roote is small and threddie, taking hold of the upper surface of the earth, where it spreadeth." So also it is drawn as a creeper in F. 492, where the flower appears to be oppressed and concealed by the leafage.

10. Minuta, called 'hirsuta' in S. 985: an ugly characteristic to name the lovely little thing by. The distinct blue lines in the petals might perhaps justify 'picta' or 'lineata,' rather than an epithet of size; but I suppose it is Gerarde's Minima, and so leave it, more safely named as 'minute' than 'least.' For I think the next variety may dispute the leastness.

FIG. V.

11. Verna. D. 252. Mountains, in dry places in early spring. Upright, and confused in the leafage, which is sharp-pointed and close set, much hiding the blossom, but of extreme elegance, fit for a sacred foreground; as any gentle student will feel, who copies this outline from the Flora Danica, Fig. 5.

12. Peregrina. Another extremely small variety, nearly pink in colour, passing into bluish lilac and white. American; but called, I do not see why, 'Veronique voyageuse,' by the French, and Fremder Ehrenpreis in Germany. Given as a frequent English weed in S. 927.

13. Alpina. Veronique des Alpes. Gebirgs Ehrenpreis. Still minute; its scarcely distinct flowers forming a close head among the leaves; round-petalled in D. 16, but sharp, as usual, in S. 980. On the Norway Alps in grassy places; and in Scotland by the side of mountain rills; but rare. On Ben Nevis and Lachin y Gair (S.)