The Naturalist on the Thames | Page 8

names imply. The true
lilies are among the oldest of plants. But "water-lilies" are not lilies.
They have been placed in order between the barberry and the poppy,
because the seed-head of a water-lily is like the poppy fruit. The
villarsia, which looks like a water-lily, is not related at all, while the
buck-bean is not a bean, but akin to the gentians. Water-violet might be
more properly called water-primrose, for it is closely related to the
primrose, though its colour is certainly violet, and not pale yellow. By
this time all the bladderworts have disappeared under water. In June in
a pool near the inflow of the Thames at Day's Lock, opposite
Dorchester, the fine leafless yellow spikes of flower were standing out
of the water like orchids, while the bladders with their trapdoors were
employed in catching and devouring small tadpoles. There is something
quietly horrible about these carnivorous plants. Their bladders are far
too small to take one in whole, but catch the unhappy infant tadpoles by
their tails and hold them till they die from exhaustion.
The bank flora of the Thames is nearly all the same from Oxford to
Hampton Court, made up of some score of very fine and striking
flowers that grow from foot to crest on the wall of light marl that forms
the bank. Constantly refreshed by the adjacent water, they flower and
seed, seed and flower, and are haunted by bees and butterflies till the
November frosts. The most decorative of all are the spikes of purple
loose-strife. In autumn when most of the flowers are dead the tip of the
leaf at the heads of the spikes turns as crimson as a flower. The other
red flowers are the valerian, in masses of squashed strawberry, and the
fig-wort, tall, square-stemmed, and set with small carmine knots of
flower. In autumn these become brown seed crockets, and are most
decorative. The fourth tall flower is the flea-bane, and the fifth the great
willow-herb. The lesser plants are the small willow-herbs, whose late
blossoms are almost carmine, the water-mints, with mauve-grey
flowers, and the comfrey, both purple and white. The dewberry, a
blue-coloured more luscious bramble fruit, and tiny wild roses, grow on
the marl-face also. At its foot are the two most beautiful flowers,
though not the most effective, the small yellow snapdragon, or
toad-flax, and the forget-me-not. This blue of the forget-me-nots is as

peculiar as it is beautiful. It is not a common blue by any means, any
more than the azure of the chalk-blue butterflies is common among
other insects. Colour is a very constant feature in certain groups of
flowers. One of these includes the forget-me-nots, the borage, the
alkanet, and the viper's bugloss, which keep up this blue as a family
heirloom. Others of the tribe, like the comfrey, have it not, but those
which possess it keep it pure.
The willows at this time are ready to shed their leaves at the slightest
touch of frost. Yet these leaves are covered with the warts made by the
saw-flies to deposit their eggs in. The male saw-fly of this species and
some others is scarcely ever seen, though the female is so common.
The creature stings the leaf, dropping into the wound a portion of
formic acid, and then lays its egg. The stung leaf swells, and makes the
protecting gall. It is difficult to say when "fly," in the fisherman's use of
the term as the adult insect food of fish, may not appear on the water.
Moths are out on snowy nights, as every collector knows, and on any
mild winter day flies and gnats are seen by streams. In the warm, sunny
days of late September, numbers of some species of ephemerae were
seen on the sedges and willows, with black bodies and gauzy wings,
which the dace and bleak were swallowing eagerly, in quite summer
fashion. The water is now unusually clear, and as the fish come to sun
themselves in the shallows every shoal can be seen.
Among the typical Thames-valley flowers, all of which would be the
better for protection, are the very rare soldier orchis (_Orchis Militaris_)
and the monkey orchis (_Orchis Simia_), the water-snowflake, the
hottonia, or water-violet, the water-villarsia, more elegant even than the
water-lilies, the flowering rush, with a crown of bright rose-pink
flowers. The two orchids named are very interesting plants. Of the
monkey orchis Mr. Claridge Druce says in his "Flora of Oxfordshire"
that it has become exceedingly scarce, not so much from the
depredations of collectors, but from the fondness of rabbits for it and
the changes brought about by agriculture. The soldier orchis is very
rare indeed; both are only found in a few woods in the Thames valley,
and possibly in