British Wild Flowers Author:Thomas Moore Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 78 SUMMER FLOWERS. "Behold those brightly-tinted Roses, How fresh the blush upon their silken leaves, With the clear dewdrop glancing in the sun A3 bright ... more »as diamond, with its ray intense, Shining the most when most 'tis shone upon! Does it not glad thy heart to look on them ? Are they not glorious ministers of Heaven, Shedding their sweetness on the summer earth To tell us of His love who sent them here ?" Covntett of Blessingion. ILLUSTRATIONS. The Rose is par excellence the flower of summer. Summer indeed " brings the Roses back to us, and their rich fragrance loads the golden air," as many a wanderer through our rural lanes and bye-ways can testify. This is true of the Wild Roses —to say nothing of our garden beauties. The Dog Rose is one of the commonest of our wild Roses, being found in almost every hedge and thicket: " vaulting o'er banks of flowers." It forms a somewhat straggling bush, armed with strong curved prickles; and the branches, which are furnished with elegant pinnated leaves, bearing stipules orlittle wing-leaflets on either side at the base, are profusely decorated with spreading five-petaled flowers. Rosa canina—Plate 11 D. The flowers—those of the single Dog Rose—consist of an egg-shaped smooth-surfaced calyx-tube contracted towards the tip, and dividing into a spreading limb of five, often unequal, sometimes lobate and almost leafy, segments. The five petals are obcordate and generally pink, and within them the numerous stamens are inserted around the mouth of the calyx-tube, which latter encloses the numerous one-seeded carpels. This part, that is, the calyx-tube, enlarges and acquires as it ripens a certain degree of succulency, becoming converted into the bright scarlet hips so commonly seen on wild Rose bushes, and with which t...« less