Page:A Book of the West (vol. 2).djvu/315

Rh Another heath found there and near Truro is the Erica ciliaris, with bright purple flowers of oblong form; it is by far the most beautiful of our English heaths. The flowers are half an inch in length, growing down the upper part of the stem, and the leaves are delicately fringed with hairs. It has a somewhat glutinous feel. It is rare except in Cornwall.

A rare plant, and pretty withal, is the strapwort (Corrigiola littoralis), trailing among the shingle on the bar of Loe Pool. It has minute white flowers and glaucous leaves. The plant has a curious habit of shifting its quarters almost every year from one part of the shore to another.

"Sometimes, for instance, it abounds on the slaty beach at Penrose, but scarcely a single specimen is to be found on the opposite side of the lake. Next year, perhaps, it grows in profusion on the eastern beaches, but has disappeared from its former station." (.)

The strapwort grows nowhere else in Britain but here and in two places in Devonshire.

On the cliffs may be seen the sky-blue vernal squill in May and June, but by midsummer it has disappeared to make room for the autumnal squill, a much less beautiful species.

In marshy spots may be found the pale pinguicula and the buckbean. Four kinds of genistas are to be seen in flower, bright and yellow.

The purple allium, or chive garlic, may be found where water has stood during the winter.

The common asparagus grows in great abundance