"Mountain Gorses, do ye teach us, That the wisest word man reaches Ye who live on mountain peak, Yet live low on the ground, besides the grasses meek.” All the livelong summer day-and the hotter it is the more one will hear it-the dry seed-pods of the Gorse are continually exploding, now in volleys, now in sharp fusillades or peppering shots. A small and much rarer species of Gorse (Ulex nana) is sought after by botanists, and esteemed a "good find." Belonging to the same natural order is an allied shrub, not uncommon on many hillsides, where its lighter yellow blossoms mass together almost as vividly as those of the Gorse-the common Broom (Cytisus scoparius). It ranges from Caithness southwards, and is found in the Highlands at as great a height as 2,000 feet. Everybody is acquainted with the appearance of this beautiful shrub. In former times its young shoots were much sought after for diseases of the bladder and dropsy; and in the northern counties and Scotland its medicinal credit is still great among the common people. One of the old Scottish ballads thus speaks of this familiar plant : "O, the Broom, the bonny, bonny Broom, The Broom of the Cowden knowes; For sure so soft, so sweet a bloom Elsewhere there never grows." And Burns mentions it in one of those delicious poems which so graphically bring before us the principal flowers of the heaths and moorlands : "Their groves of sweet myrtle let foreign lands reckon, "Far dearer to me are yon humble Broom bowers, Where the bluebell and gowan lurk lowly, unseen; The Gorse as well as the Broom gives out a pleasant perfume, although some people do not enjoy it. One of our poets speaks of "The golden Broom Which scents the passing gale." Nearly allied to the Broom is another plant which we have frequently gathered on the hillsides of Cumberland and Westmoreland-the Dyer's Greenweed (Genista tinctoria). Its popular name originates from its habit of turning a bright green colour in drying. For generations this plant has been used for a yellow dye it yields, and in connection with the plant anciently known as "woad" for dyeing wool a green colour. It was a species of Genista, and not the common Broom (Planta genista) which the Plantagenets adopted for their knightly badge, and which afterwards gave them their family name. But we have hundreds of square miles of hillside heath and moorland which know little or nothing of the shrubs just mentioned, and where the different kinds of heather have the monopoly of the ground. The two species which more or less abound on every moor are, first, the common or Fine-leaved Heather (Erica cinerea), and next in degree the much prettier Cross-leaved Heath (Erica tetralix). Neither is so FINE-LEAVED HEATH (Erica cinerea). abundant, however, as the Ling (Calluna vulgaris). The first-mentioned species has its leaves in threes, and the vase-shaped flowers are in irregular-whorled clusters. The Cross-leaved Heath has the leaves in fours, whilst the larger blush-tinted flowers cluster more on the summits of the young shoots of the wiry stalks. The Fine-leaved Heath (E. cinerea) was formerly used in brewing beer. The Highlanders have long employed it for dyeing their tartans and making their beds. It is the Ling, however, to which the name of Heather is distinctively applied. This plant grows to a greater size than the afore-mentioned heaths, not unfrequently growing to the height of two and three feet on the Highland mountains. This it is which gives the moorland landscape its chief botanical feature, and whose purple flowers light up the otherwise dreary hillsides with a glow which in a picture seems too unreal. The Ling it is on whose seeds the grouse and blackcock feed, and which affords these moorland birds a winter shelter. From its tiny blossoms the bees for miles around derive their honey, and to the places are full of busy industry and animal life. The botanist is aware that the mouths of these heather flowers are so constructed, partly by the THE CROSS-LEAVED HEATH (Erica tetralix). naturalist these waste |