Page:Wayside and Woodland Blossoms.djvu/140

65 plant, with erect branching stems. The true poppies have a milky juice: this plant, like the Welsh-poppy (Meconopsis), and the Horned-poppy (Glaucium) has a yellow juice. The leaf is much divided, the leaflets deeply lobed, with somewhat of a resemblance to an oak-leaf. The rather small yellow flowers are combined in umbels, borne on a long stalk, to be out of the way of the somewhat erect leaves. There are two sepals and four petals, as in Papaver, but the fruit, instead of being an urn-like capsule as in that genus, is a long pod with two valves, which separate from the base upwards.

It is a plant of the hedgerow and waste ground, where it may be found in flower from May to August. The yellow juice, which is very acrid and poisonous, had formerly a reputation as an eye medicine, and as a caustic for the burning away of warts.

Like the Celandines, this plant was known to our fathers as a Cuckoo-flower; in fact, in many parts of the country its name is still "Cuckoo-flower," but as that title is also given to the Ladies'-smock confusion is caused by its use. It is one of the Campions, a genus of graceful plants that is included in the Natural Order of the Pinks (Caryophylleæ). The habit of the plant will suggest the Stitchwort, to which it is not very distantly related. It is a perennial plant, delighting in moist places, whether wet meadows, ditch banks or bogs. The leaves that spring directly from the slender rootstock are stalked; those on the reddish stem are not. The calyx is dark red, with purple veins; the rosy petals cut into four eccentric narrow segments. The flowers produce honey, and the stamens come to maturity before the stigmas, thus favouring cross-fertilization. Flowers May to August.

There is another common rosy-flowered Lychnis that occurs in somewhat similar situations. This is:—