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Wood sorrel nestled in the grassy corners near the crude rail fences, daisies and spiked toad-flax grew lavishly among the weeds of the roadside. In the meadows tall milkweed swayed its clusters of pink and lavender, marsh-marigolds dotted the grass with discs of pure gold, and Queen Anne's lace lifted its parasols of exquisite loveliness.
I sat on the edge looking down at the ivy, and toad-flax, and saxifrage, and ferns that climbed and clustered all over the steep cliff-face; and as I sat looking and enjoying the sea-breeze and the rest from all school labours, old Sam went on cleaning out the guns and expressing in his way the feelings of nearly everybody round the coast. "Is my father over at the mine?" I said.
Of further plants related to his Satanic majesty is the clematis, termed "devil's thread," the toad-flax is his ribbon, the indigo his dye, while the scandix forms his darning-needles. The tritoma, with its brilliant red blossom, is familiar in most localities as the "devil's poker," and the ground ivy has been nicknamed the "devil's candlestick," the mandrake supplying his candle.
Everywhere about is the trumpet creeper, but not yet in bloom. The Indian turnip is in blossom here, and so the smaller Solomon's seal, yellow spikes of toad-flax, blue and pink phlox, glossy May apple; high up on the hillside, the fire pink and wintergreen; and, down by the sandy shore, great beds of blue wild lupin, and occasionally stately spikes of the familiar moth mullein.
I have never seen earth taken from so great a depth that it would not before the end of the season be clothed with a crop of weeds. Weeds are so full of expedients, and the one engrossing purpose with them is to multiply. The wild onion multiplies at both ends, at the top by seed, and at the bottom by offshoots. Toad-flax travels under ground and above ground.
Here I might refer to the observations concerning the invisible dimorphous state of the flowers of the normal toad-flax. Individuals of the same type, when fertilized with each other, are nearly, but not absolutely, sterile. The yield of seeds of my peloric plants agrees fairly well with the harvest which I have obtained from some of the nearly sterile pairs of individuals in my former trial.
Beside the Plymouth road, as it plunges down-hill past Ruan Lanihale church towards Ruan Cove, and ten paces beyond the lych-gate where the graves lie level with the coping, and the horseman can decipher their inscriptions in passing, at the risk of a twisted neck the base of the churchyard wall is pierced with a low archway, festooned with toad-flax and fringed with the hart's-tongue fern.
Why not bee-orchises for wartwort, and gentians for chickweed? I have no fault to find with the foxgloves under the apple-tree or with the ivy-leaved toad-flax that hangs with its elfin flowers from every cranny in the wall. But I protest against the dandelions and the superfluity of groundsel.
I have saved the seeds of the isolated types and before seeing the flowers of their offspring, nothing can be said about the purity and constancy of the type, when freed from hybrid admixtures. The peloric snapdragon has five small unequal spurs at the base of its long tube, and in this respect agrees with the peloric toad-flax.
There is a wanton tangling and mingling of the waste-loving flowers, such as the yellow toad-flax, the bristling viper's bugloss, the thorny ononis that spreads a hue of pink as it creeps along the ground, sky-blue chicory on wiry stems, large milk-white blooms of datura, and purple heads of centaurea calcitrapa, whose spines are avoided like those of a hedgehog by people who walk with bare feet.
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