Читать книгу Colin Clout's Calendar: The Record of a Summer, April-October - Allen Grant - Страница 9

Table of Contents

Walking down the avenue the other day, I noticed how the elms that line its sides and the flowering almonds dotted about on the shrubbery were all in full bloom long before the ordinary small plants could venture to peep out; and I could not help observing that this habit of early blossoming was closely dependent upon the great size and perennial trunks of the larger trees. They are enabled by means of their old wood to store up in their permanent tissues the organised material necessary for the production of flowers; and so they get a good start of all their less fortunate neighbours, and come in for the first attentions of the spring bees and butterflies. To-day, however, out in the deep lane which runs through Walcombe Vale, the similar efforts of the smaller plants are forced upon my notice. There are already some half-dozen flowers to be seen on the high bank that bounds the lane or in the meadows on either side; and every one of these flowers has some special device of its own which enables it to come out thus early in the season, before many of its near allies have begun to sprout from the swelling seed. It is a general characteristic of all the first spring blossoms that they appear either before their leaves, or else while the leaves are still only half developed; and of course such a habit implies that material for their growth has already been laid by elsewhere. For flowers are mere expenders of food, not accumulators of food on their own account. The leaves are the only part of the plant which can build up fresh organised matter; and the matter composing every flower has been sent to it by the leaves, either immediately, as in most annuals, or through the storehouse of a root, stem, or tuber, as in most perennials. A hyacinth-bulb is a good and familiar instance of such a storehouse.

Here, for example, among the shady greenery of the bank I can gather numberless flowering heads of the perennial mercury—a queer little three-cornered green flower, with copious clusters of its tiny feathery blossoms hanging out upon long and graceful stalklets. This mercury has a permanent creeping rootstock, in which it lays by during the summer and autumn the material needed for its next year’s bloom; and so it can come out abundantly in the early spring before the shiny green leaves are yet fully opened. On the other hand, its very close ally, the annual mercury, grows afresh from the seed every season, and therefore it has not accumulated enough capital to begin flowering until the late summer and autumn months. Yonder, again, on the slope of the hill in the Fore Acre, I see a pale bunch of primroses, their short stalks all tightly clinging to the rootstock, in which the material for their growth has been kept safely through the dangers of winter: and if you tear up the stock, you will see that it is large and starchy, though it does not actually form a tuber, as in its near and more brilliant relative, the cyclamen. Further on, the railway embankment is all yellow with the tall gaunt-looking scapes and tufted flower-heads of the coltsfoot, a yet more significant and interesting plant The coltsfoot is a sort of fluffy ragwort, which sends up from its perennial starchy root a number of solitary, stiff, straight, cottony stems at the first promise of spring, each ending in a single golden head, but without any foliage except some small brownish scales, much like those of sprouting asparagus shoots. After the blossoms are all over, the large woolly leaves begin to appear, and occupy themselves during the summer in collecting starch over again to fill the root for next spring’s flower-heads. At my feet, once more, I see a mass of bright glossy heart-shaped leaves, interspersed with the brilliant yellow blossoms of the smaller celandine—‘gilt-cups’ the village children call them: and the celandine also enforces the same principle. It is one of the earliest flowers to appear in spring; while most of its congeners, the crowfoots and buttercups, do not show themselves till July or August: and if you grub it up you will soon see the reason why. The buttercups have simple thread-like roots; but the lesser celadine has a lot of roundish mealy tubes, which it renews from year to year, and which form the reserve-fund on which it draws for its early blossoms. These habits of storing starchy foodstuffs are to certain plants just what the analogous habits of laying by honey, hoarding nuts, or gathering grain are to the bee, the squirrel, and the harvesting ants, among animals.

Turning from these little wayside blossoms to the large and conspicuous spring flowers, such as the daffodil, the narcissus, the snowdrop, the hyacinth, and the crocus, one cannot help observing at once that they are all without exception bulbous plants. Their large showy heads of bloom require far more expenditure of raw material than the tiny green flowers of the mercury, the thin pellucid rays of the primrose, or even the bright golden corolla of the lesser celandine. Moreover, if you look closely at most of these bulbous blossoms, you will see that they have very thick and fleshy petals, quite different from the light papery petals of the wood anemone or the violet This fleshiness is very well exemplified in the hyacinth, the tulip, and the tiger-lily—all of them thick and stout blossoms, which flaunt their colours boldly in the sunlight, and are little afraid of either wind or rain. Throughout the whole of nature, I believe, you will never find a brilliant mass of heavy bloom on a strictly annual plant; and all the more massive forms are provided for beforehand by means of bulbs, corms, or tubers. Such are the water-lilies, lotus, dahlias, orchids, iris, gladiolus, tuberose, arum, amaryllis, fritillary, saffron, tulip, and almost all lilies. On the other hand, whenever you find a single comparatively inconspicuous plant among these families—as, for example, Solomon’s seal, with its small drooping greenish-white blossoms—one is sure to find also that it is a bulbless annual.

Nearly all the other very conspicuous flowers are shrubby or arboreal in habit, and so get their working capital from the store laid up in the stem by last year’s leaves: as in the case of the cherry, apple, hawthorn, pyrus japonica, lilac, rose, laburnum, and all the great tropical flowering trees. None of these ever flower until after many years of foliage; and if the flower-buds are nipped off when the trees are young and first begin to bud, more foodstuffs are laid by to produce finer heads of bloom in later years. In the case of these alders here (which, however, being wind-fertilised, need make no special display), we can actually see where the catkins come from: for they were formed last autumn, and have hung on the trees unopened through the whole winter, so as to catch the very first chance of sunshine in the beginning of spring. So far as my observation goes, very few annuals or other unaided plants ever have conspicuous flowers; and those few generally produce their blossoms late in the season, after the leaves have had plenty of time to make preparations for feeding them. Even these rare exceptions are very deceptive and papery flowers, like the poppies or the hand-to-mouth convolvuluses, which manage to make a great deal of show at very little real expense. They spend all they have on a little gaudy colour, thinly spread over an extremely large flat surface.