Proserpina, Volume 2 - Ruskin John

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extremely,—I should say,—demoralizing to all the little plants in their neighbourhood: and on gathering a flower, I find it is a nasty big thing, all of a feeble blue, and with two things like horns, or thorns, sticking out where its ears would be, if the pansy's frequently monkey face were underneath them. Which I find to be two of the leaves of its calyx 'out of place,' and, at all events, for their part, therefore, weedy, and insolent.

      19. I perceive, farther, that this disorderly flower is lifted on a lanky, awkward, springless, and yet stiff flower-stalk; which is not round, as a flower-stalk ought to be, (vol. i., p. 155,) but obstinately square, and fluted, with projecting edges, like a pillar run thin out of an iron-foundry for a cheap railway station. I perceive also that it has set on it, just before turning down to carry the flower, two little jaggy and indefinable leaves,—their colour a little more violet than the blossom.

      These, and such undeveloping leaves, wherever they occur, are called 'bracts' by botanists, a good word, from the Latin 'bractea,' meaning a piece of metal plate, so thin as to crackle. They seem always a little stiff, like bad parchment,—born to come to nothing—a sort of infinitesimal fairy-lawyer's deed. They ought to have been in my index at p. 255, under the head of leaves, and are frequent in flower structure,—never, as far as one can see, of the smallest use. They are constant, however, in the flower-stalk of the whole violet tribe.

      20. I perceive, farther, that this lanky flower-stalk, bending a little in a crabbed, broken way, like an obstinate person tired, pushes itself up out of a still more stubborn, nondescript, hollow angular, dogseared gas-pipe of a stalk, with a section something like this,

      but no bigger than

with a quantity of ill-made and ill-hemmed leaves on it, of no describable leaf-cloth or texture,—not cressic, (though the thing does altogether look a good deal like a quite uneatable old watercress); not salvian, for there's no look of warmth or comfort in them; not cauline, for there's no juice in them; not dryad, for there's no strength in them, nor apparent use: they seem only there, as far as I can make out, to spoil the flower, and take the good out of my garden bed. Nobody in the world could draw them, they are so mixed up together, and crumpled and hacked about, as if some ill-natured child had snipped them with blunt scissors, and an ill-natured cow chewed them a little afterwards and left them, proved for too tough or too bitter.

      21. Having now sufficiently observed, it seems to me, this incongruous plant, I proceed to ask myself, over it, M. Figuier's question, 'Qu'est-ce c'est qu'un Pensée?' Is this a violet—or a pansy—or a bad imitation of both?

      Whereupon I try if it has any scent: and to my much surprise, find it has a full and soft one—which I suppose is what my gardener keeps it for! According to Dr. Lindley, then, it must be a violet! But according to M. Figuier,—let me see, do its middle petals bend up, or down?

      I think I'll go and ask the gardener what he calls it.

      22. My gardener, on appeal to him, tells me it is the 'Viola Cornuta,' but that he does not know himself if it is violet or pansy. I take my Loudon again, and find there were fifty-three species of violets, known in his days, of which, as it chances, Cornuta is exactly the last.

      'Horned violet': I said the green things were like horns!—but what is one to say of, or to do to, scientific people, who first call the spur of the violet's petal, horn, and then its calyx points, horns, and never define a 'horn' all the while!

      Viola Cornuta, however, let it be; for the name does mean something, and is not false Latin. But whether violet or pansy, I must look farther to find out.

      23. I take the Flora Danica, in which I at least am sure of finding whatever is done at all, done as well as honesty and care can; and look what species of violets it gives.

      Nine, in the first ten volumes of it; four in their modern sequel (that I know of,—I have had no time to examine the last issues). Namely, in alphabetical order, with their present Latin, or tentative Latin, names; and in plain English, the senses intended by the hapless scientific people, in such their tentative Latin:—

      I next run down this list, noting what names we can keep, and what we can't; and what aren't worth keeping, if we could: passing over the varieties, however, for the present, wholly.

      (1) Arvensis. Field-violet. Good.

      (2) Biflora. A good epithet, but in false Latin. It is to be our Viola aurea, golden pansy.

      (3) Canina. Dog. Not pretty, but intelligible, and by common use now classical. Must stay.

      (4) Hirta. Late Latin slang for hirsuta, and always used of nasty places or nasty people; it shall not stay. The species shall be our Viola Seclusa,—Monk's violet—meaning the kind of monk who leads a rough life like Elijah's, or the Baptist's, or Esau's—in another kind. This violet is one of the loveliest that grows.

      (5) Mirabilis. Stays so; marvellous enough, truly: not more so than all violets; but I am very glad to hear of scientific people capable of admiring anything.

      (6) Montana. Stays so.

      (7) Odorata. Not distinctive;—nearly classical, however. It is to be our Viola Regina, else I should not have altered it.

      (8) Palustris. Stays so.

      (9) Tricolor. True, but intolerable. The flower is the queen of the true pansies: to be our Viola Psyche.

      (10) Elatior. Only a variety of our already accepted Cornuta.

      (11) The last is, I believe, also only a variety of Palustris. Its leaves, I am informed in the text, are either "pubescent-reticulate-venose-subreniform," or "lato-cordate-repando-crenate;" and its stipules are "ovate-acuminate-fimbrio-denticulate." I do not wish to pursue the inquiry farther.

      24. These ten species will include, noting here and there a local variety, all the forms which are familiar to us in Northern Europe, except only two;—these, as it singularly chances, being the Viola Alpium, noblest of all the wild pansies in the world, so far as I have seen or heard of them,—of which, consequently, I find no picture, nor notice, in any botanical work whatsoever; and the other, the rock-violet of our own Yorkshire hills.

      We have therefore, ourselves, finally then, twelve following species to study. I give them now all in their accepted names and proper order,—the reasons for occasional difference between the Latin and English name will be presently given.

      25. We will try, presently, what is to be found out of useful, or pretty, concerning all these twelve violets; but must first find out how we are to know which are violets indeed, and which, pansies.

      Yesterday, after finishing my list, I went out again to examine Viola Cornuta a little closer, and pulled up a full grip of it by the roots, and put it in water in a wash-hand basin, which it filled like a truss of green hay.

      Pulling out two or three separate plants, I find each to consist mainly of a jointed stalk of a kind I have not yet described,—roughly, some two feet long altogether; (accurately, one 1 ft. 10½ in.; another, 1 ft. 10 in.; another, 1 ft. 9 in.—but all these measures taken without straightening, and therefore about an inch short of the truth), and divided into seven or eight lengths by clumsy joints where the mangled leafage is knotted on it; but broken a little out of the way at each joint, like a rheumatic elbow that won't come straight, or bend farther; and—which is the most curious point of all in it—it is thickest in the middle, like a viper, and gets quite thin to the root and thin towards the flower; also the lengths between the joints are longest in the middle: here I give them in inches, from the root upwards, in a stalk taken at random.

      But the thickness of the joints and length of terminal flower stalk bring the total to two feet and about an inch over. I dare not pull it straight, or should break it, but it overlaps my two-foot rule considerably, and there are two inches besides of root, which are merely underground stem, very thin and wretched, as the rest of it

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