ll not, however, expatiate on the
hazel, the pride of our old copse-banks, but look beneath its long
slender branches, and there, lurking modestly, do I see that pretty
little yellow flower, the lesser celandine (_Ficaria verna_.) Every one
knows this little early blossom by sight, if not by name. Its root is
formed of numerous clustering tubercles, or oblong knobs, with fibres.
This root is sometimes washed by the rain until these tubercles appear
above ground, when, as Loudon tells us, 'ignorant people have sometimes
been led to fancy that it rained _wheat_.' The celandine has
slightly-branched stems, two or three inches in height, on which grow
alternate stalked heart-shaped leaves, sheathed at the base, where they
sometimes contain one or two knobs like those of the root. The flowers,
which are terminal and solitary, are much like a butter-cup--of a golden
yellow, and exceedingly shining within, and tinged with green on the
outsides. 'After the flowre decays,' says Gerarde, 'there springeth up
a little fine knop or headful of seede.' This head of seed alone is left
by about May to mark where the plant grew; and even this soon dries up
and disappears. Wordsworth has thrown an interest about this plant,
which it would not otherwise have possessed, by his elegant little poem
called _The Lesser Celandine_.

Here and there, also, in the more sheltered spots, we find a blossom or
two of the pretty pink herb Robert (_Geranium Robertianum_), with its
hairy red stems, and divided leaves, and star-shaped blossoms of bright
rose-colour; or an early plant of the ground-ivy (_Glechoma hederacea_)
gemming the ground with its purple, labiate flowers on the sunny bank
beneath the underwood, luring one for a moment to believe that the sweet
purple violets were already come: vain hope! which not only the season
but the place forbids; for though I have found _white_ violets near the
scene of these excursions, in the south of England, yet I believe the
sweet-scented purple do not grow in that neighbourhood. In a late
ramble, there was a spot which I was eager to reach; for there I knew
that I should find

'Chaste snow-drop, venturous harbinger of spring,
And pensive monitor of fleeting years.'

This pretty well-known flower, sometimes called Fair Maid of February
(_Galanthus Nivalis_), belongs to the same natural order as the daffodil
and narcissus--the _Amaryllideae_. Gerarde calls it 'the timely flouring
bulbous violet,' a