The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare Part 46

As a wild plant, the Ivy is found in Europe, Asia, and Africa, but not in America, and wherever it is found it loves to cover old walls and buildings, and trees of every sort, with its close and rich drapery and cl.u.s.ters of black fruit,[132:1] and where it once establishes itself it is always beautiful, but not always harmless. Both on trees and buildings it requires very close watching. It will very soon destroy soft-wooded trees, such as the Poplar and the Ash, by its tight embrace, not by sucking out the sap, but by preventing the outward growth of the shoots, and checking--and at length preventing--the flow of sap; and in buildings it is no doubt beneficial as long as it is closely watched and kept in place, but if allowed to drive its roots into joints, or to grow under roofs, the swelling roots and branches will soon displace any masonry, and cause immense mischief.

We have only one species of Ivy in England, and there are only two real species recognized by present botanists, but there are infinite varieties, and many of them very beautiful. These variegated Ivies were known to the Greeks and Romans, and were highly prized by them, one especially with white fruit (at present not known) was the type of beauty. No higher praise could be given to a beauty than that she was "Hedera formosior alba." These varieties are scarcely mentioned by Gerard and Parkinson, and probably were not much valued; they are now in greater repute, and nothing will surpa.s.s them for rapidly and effectually covering any bare s.p.a.ces.

I need scarcely add that the Ivy is so completely hardy that it will grow in any aspect and in any soil; that its flowers are the staple food of bees in the late autumn; and that all the varieties grow easily from cuttings at almost any time of the year.

FOOTNOTES:

[130:1] Sheep feeding on Ivy--

"My sheep have Honeysuckle bloom for pasture; Ivy grows In mult.i.tudes around them, and blossoms like the Rose."

THEOCRITUS, _Idyll_ v. (_Calverley_).

[132:1]

"The Ivy-mesh Shading the Ethiop berries."--KEATS, _Endymion_.

KECKSIES.

_Burgundy._

And nothing teems But hateful Docks, rough Thistles, Kecksies, Burs, Losing both beauty and utility.

_Henry V_, act v, sc. 2 (51).

Kecksies or Kecks are the dried and withered stems of the Hemlock, and the name is occasionally applied to the living plant. It seems also to have been used for any dry weeds--

"All the wyves of Tottenham came to se that syght, With Wyspes, and Kexis, and ryschys ther lyght, To fech hom ther husbandes, that wer tham trouth plyght."

"The Tournament of Tottenham," in RITSON'S _Ancient Songs and Ballads_.

KNOT-GRa.s.s.

_Lysander._

Get you gone, you dwarf; You minimus, of hindering Knot-gra.s.s made; You bead, you Acorn.

_Midsummer Night's Dream_, act iii, sc. 2 (328).

The Knot-gra.s.s is the Polygonum aviculare, a British weed, low, straggling, and many-jointed, hence its name of Knot-gra.s.s. There is no doubt that this is the plant meant, and its connection with a dwarf is explained by the belief, probably derived from some unrecorded character detected by the "doctrine of signatures," that the growth of children could be stopped by a diet of Knot-gra.s.s. Steevens quotes Beaumont and Fletcher to this effect, and this will probably explain the epithet "hindering." But there may be another explanation. Johnston tells us that in the north, "being difficult to cut in the harvest time, or to pull in the process of weeding, it has obtained the sobriquet of the Deil's-lingels." From this it may well be called "hindering," just as the Ononis, from the same habit of catching the plough and harrow, has obtained the prettier name of "Rest-harrow."

But though Shakespeare's Knot-gra.s.s is undoubtedly the Polygonum, yet the name was also given to another plant, for this cannot be the plant mentioned by Milton--

"The chewing flocks Had ta'en their supper on the savoury herb Of Knot-gra.s.s dew-besprent."--_Comus._

In this case it must be one of the pasture Gra.s.ses, and may be Agrostis stolonifera, as it is said to be in Aubrey's "Natural History of Wilts"

(Dr. Prior).

LADY-SMOCKS.

_Song of Spring._

And Lady-smocks all silver-white, And Cuckoo-buds of yellow hue, Do paint the meadows with delight.

_Love's Labour's Lost_, act v, sc. 2 (905).

Lady-smocks are the flowers of Cardamine pratensis, the pretty early meadow flower of which children are so fond, and of which the popularity is shown by its many names: Lady-smocks, Cuckoo-flower,[134:1] Meadow Cress, Pinks, Spinks, Bog-spinks, and May-flower, and "in Northfolke, Canterbury Bells." The origin of the name is not very clear. It is generally explained from the resemblance of the flowers to smocks hung out to dry, but the resemblance seems to me rather far-fetched.

According to another explanation, "the Lady-smock, a corruption of Our Lady's-smock, is so called from its first flowering about Lady-tide. It is a pretty purplish white, tetradynamous plant, which blows from Lady-tide till the end of May, and which during the latter end of April covers the moist meadows with its silvery-white, which looks at a distance like a white sheet spread over the fields."--_Circle of the Seasons._ Those who adopt this view called the plant Our Lady's-smock, but I cannot find that name in any old writers. Drayton, coeval with Shakespeare, says--

"Some to grace the show, Of Lady-smocks most white do rob each neighbouring mead, Wherewith their loose locks most curiously they braid."

And Isaac Walton, in the next century, drew that pleasant picture of himself sitting quietly by the waterside--"looking down the meadows I could see here a boy gathering Lilies and Lady-smocks, and there a girl cropping Culverkeys and Cowslips."[134:2]

There is a double variety of the Lady-smock which makes a handsome garden plant, and there is a remarkable botanical curiosity connected with the plant which should be noticed. The plant often produces in the autumn small plants upon the leaves, and by the means of these little parasites the plant is increased, and even if the leaves are detached from the plant, and laid upon moist congenial soil, young plants will be produced. This is a process that is well known to gardeners in the propagation of Begonias, and it is familiar to us in the proliferous Ferns, where young plants are produced on the surface or tips of the fronds; and Dr. Masters records "the same condition as a teratological occurrence in the leaves of Hyacinthus Pouzolsii, Drosera intermedia, Arabis pumila, Chelidonum majus, Chirita Sinensis, Epicia bicolor, Zamia, &c."--_Vegetable Teratology_, p. 170.

FOOTNOTES:

[134:1] "Ladies-smock.--A kind of water cresses, of whose virtue it partakes; and it is otherwise called Cuckoo-flower."--PHILLIPS, _World of Words_, 1696.

[134:2] Culverkeys is mentioned in Dennis' "Secrets of Angling" as a meadow flower: "pale Ganderglas, and azor Culverkayes." It is also mentioned by Aubrey, in his "Natural History of Wilts;" but the name is found in no other writer, and is now extinct. It is difficult to say what plant is meant; many have been suggested: the Columbine, the Meadow Orchis, the Bluebell, &c. I think it must be the Meadow Geranium, which is certainly "azor" almost beyond any other British plant. "Culver" is a dove or pigeon, and "keyes" or "kayes" are the seeds of a plant, and the seeds of the Geranium were all likened to the claws of birds, so that our British species is called G. columbinum.

LARK'S HEELS.

Larks heels trim.

_Two n.o.ble Kinsmen_, Introd. song.

Lark's heels is one of the many names of the Garden Delphinium, otherwise called Larkspur, Larksclaw, Larkstoes.