Page:Wayside and Woodland Blossoms.djvu/68

 derived from two Greek words, polus and gala, meaning much milk, from an ancient notion that cows eating this plant were enabled to give a greatly increased supply of milk.

There are two other British species:&mdash;

I. Proliferous Milkwort (P. calcarea), branches rooting, and giving rise to new plants. Inner sepals broader and longer. Dry soils in south and south-east of England.

II. Bitter Milkwort (P. amara), much smaller in all respects than the others; the inner sepals are narrow, and the leaves form a rosette. Very rare. Found only on the margins of rills in Teasdale, and Wye Down, Kent. They all flower from June to August.

The Germander Speedwell (Veronica chamædrys) is the representative of a genus which includes sixteen native species, most of them with bright blue flowers of a particular form. The corolla is tubular for half its length, the upper portion divided into four spreading lobes, of which the upper and lower are usually broader than the lateral pair. The two stamens are attached within the corolla-tube just below the upper lobe, and the anthers and stigma protrude beyond the mouth of the tube. V. chamædrys grows to greatest advantage in a great mass on a sloping bank, where, in May and June, its intensely bright blue flowers are very attractive. It is a most disappointing flower to gather, for the corollas readily drop off, and the beauty of the button-hole has rapidly passed. A fine robust species, the Brooklime (V. beccabunga), grows in bogs, ditches, and by the margins of streams, with stout stem and thick leaves; flowering from May to September.

The whole of the British species of Spurge have a singular character, which enables the tyro in botanical matters to determine the genus at a glance, though he may not be so