PURPLE LOOSE-STRIFE. Lythrum salicaria CREEPING CINQUEFOIL. Potentilla reptans. DOG ROSE. Rosa canina. WILD BRYONY. Bryonia Dinica. BURNET ROSE. Rosa Spinosissima. "If this fair rose offend thy sight It in thy bosom wear, 'Twill blush to find itself less white, And turn Lancastrian there." We could write a volume on the poems, legends, and fancies connected with the rose, with which indeed the name of England has been associated ages before the brawl in the Temple Gardens. The elder Pliny, in discussing the origin of the word Albion, suggests that the land may have been so called from the number of white roses which grew in it. Whatever we may think of the etymology of this old Roman, we can at least indulge in fancies as to the reports given by the invaders but lately returned from Britain, as to the woods and flowery hedge-rows under which they had often rested during their sojourn in our island. And we look with almost a new pleasure on our own wild roses when we regard them as direct descendants of the "rosas alba" of those far-off summers. The pink Dog Rose used to be called the Canker, a name it still retains in some parts of the country; but which we consider a libel on our pretty rose. Hotspur alludes to this in Shakespeare's play, when he accuses the Earls of Northumberland and Worcester of trying "To put down Richard, that sweet lovely rose, And plant this thorn, this canker, Bolingbroke!" thereby meaning a usurper, which is certainly an unfair term as applied to our own native wild hedge |