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ENCHANTER'S NIGHTSHADE
Circaea lutetiana
Family ONAGRACEAE
Along the glades of damp woods, beside the thickets and undergrowths, will be found this tall, slender plant.
The rounded stem, with its long - stalked, large, oval, opposite leaves, terminates in a long, branched raceme of pale pink flowers. The margins of the leaves are faintly toothed. If the downy leaves are held to the light the leaf-stalk will be seen to be studded with pellucid dots. Some of the lower leaves are as much as three inches long.
The pink flowers are only about one-eighth of an inch across, and are remarkable for all their parts being in twos. The hairy, tubular calyx has two lobes, there are two heart-shaped petais, two pink stamens, and the ovary is two-celled, and when it develops into an egg-shaped fruit, covered with hooked bristles, it will be found to contain two seeds.
The flowering period extends from June to late in August.
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The Water Crowfoot is not acrid, and cattle which have access to shallow waters where this plant grows. will wade out to feed upon it. Flowering in May and lutetiana Circaea June. A perennial aquatic herb, and one of the bestknown of our native plants. It is found in all districts of the British Isles where there are watercourses or even lutetiana Circaea the mere outflow of a spring. The hollow stem, under favourable conditions, may be nearly an inch thick and from two to four feet long, floating on the water or Circaea lutetiana creeping on the mud and rooting from the lower side.
After fertilization, the receptacle gradually enlarges Circaea lutetiana to such a size that the achenes, formerly paeked close together, become widely separated. The so-called berry beeomes red as it ripens, and its tissues are filled with sweet Circaea lutetiana juices. Flowering nearly the whole summer. On grasslands and roadside wastes one may be sure to find the neat leaves and long, slender, creeping stems of the Cinquefoil. It has lutetiana Circaea woody rootstocks, which extend for a foot or more in the soil, black outside and red within, and at their upper end these branch and form several erowns.
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