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The Arum maculatum is "devil's ladies and gentlemen," and the Ranunculus arvensis is the "devil on both sides." The vegetable kingdom also has been equally mindful of his majesty's food, the spurge having long been named "devil's milk" and the briony the "devil's cherry."
Winter came and went.... The heath was covered with snow and became green again.... The ranunculus lifted up their golden heads.... The juniper sent forth its tender shoots, and the warble of the lark sounded from out the blue sky. Only to the dismal Howdahs spring would not come.
We do not compose the species Ranunculus acris, of all plants which bear a satisfactory degree of resemblance to a model buttercup, but of those which possess certain characters selected as marks by which we might recognize the possibility of a common parentage; and the enumeration of those characters is the definition of the species.
I asked diplomatically; not myself knowing, to tell truth, what bulbs were at all. Plenty of sorts, the florist said; there were hyacinths all colours and tulips, striped and plain, and very gay; and crocuses, those were of nearly all colours too; and ranunculus, and anemones, and snowdrops.
In the month of May, when the orchard was full of its rosy and pearly blossoms, a forest of lovely bloom, the meadows yellow with cowslips, and the clear brimming river, bordered by the golden tufts of the water ranunculus, and garlanded by the snowy flowers of the hawthorn and the wild cherry, the thin wreath of smoke curling from the tall, old-fashioned chimneys of the pretty irregular building, with its porch, and its baywindows, and gable-ends full of light and shadow, in that month of beauty it would be difficult to imagine a more beautiful or a more English landscape.
The turf from whence they rise is enamelled, in the strict sense of the word, with flowers. A sort of bluebell predominated, brighter than ultramarine; here and there auriculas looked out of the moss, and I often reposed upon tufts of ranunculus. Bushes of phillerea were very frequent, the sun shining full on their glossy leaves.
The caudex of the ranunculus, cultivated by the florists, lies above the claw-like root; in this the old root or claws die annually, like the tulip and orchis, and the new claws, which are seen above the old ones, draw down the caudex lower into the earth.
There was gold, pure virgin gold in that blessed kiss. There, that is my little story," said the Ranunculus. "My poor old grandmother!" sighed Gerda. "Yes, she is longing for me, no doubt: she is sorrowing for me, as she did for little Kay. But I will soon come home, and then I will bring Kay with me.
Or the spots may disappear and the color become uniform as in Gentiana punctata concolor and the spotless Arum or Arum maculatum immaculatum. Absence of hairs produces forms as Biscutella laevigata glabra; lack of prickles gives the varieties known as inermis, as for instance, Ranunculus arvensis inermis.
And then at last the serpent charm changes the ranunculus into monkshood, and makes it poisonous. And observe, again and again, with respect to all these divisions and powers of plants: it does not matter in the least by what concurrences of circumstance or necessity they may gradually have been developed; the concurrence of circumstance is itself the supreme and inexplicable fact.
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