Music Welcome to Snewscast, the podcast designed to help you fall asleep. Find us on Snewscast.com and if you enjoy our show, please share us with a friend. This episode is brought to you by Honey Suckle and Wild Rose. Tonight we'll read about handsome weeds and wildflowers from Flowers of the Farm, written by Arthur O. Cook and published in 1900. In the last episode, which aired last week, the wall flower was discussed among other flowers. Wall flowers are perhaps more commonly known today as people who gravitate to the sidelines of social gatherings. However, the wall flower is the common name for a genus of flowering plants called a

ruseum, part of the cabbage family of plants. It includes more than 150 species, both popular garden plants and many wild forms. Let's get cozy. Close your eyes. Relax your body into the softness of your bed. Now take a few deep breaths. Now it is June and the blossoms of the wall flower have faded and fallen. The old wall is, however, growing gay with another plant, the red valarian. We must be careful to remember that it is the red valarian for there are other valarians. There is the great valarian which does not grow on walls or rocks, but in damp and shady places, its flowers are pale pink. The blossoms of the red valarian on the wall are bright crimson, and they grow in rows on small stems, which spring from a stout stalk of foot or two in height. Each blossom of five petals forms a little tube or corolla. The base or foot of each little tube appears as a point on the underside of the flower stem. The red fallarian, like the violet, is a spurred flower. The leaves are long and pointed, and they grow in pairs on opposite sides of the stalk. Sometimes the edges of the leaves are quite smooth. Sometimes they are serrated or toothed, like the edge of a saw. If we pooled a plant of red valerian from the wall, we should find the roots very long and branching. They need to be so, for the plant often grows on rocks and other places where it is exposed to wind. If the roots had not a firm hold, the tall stems laid in with blossoms might be blown down. The red valerian flowers all through the summer. Its clusters of crimson flowers are as great an ornament to the old wall as were the wall flowers in May. Now let us go down the steps into the fold yard. There is a wall on either side of us as we descend. The wall which faces the north is nearly always in shadow, and there are ferns growing but of it between the stones. One of these is a beautiful heart's tongue fern with large and shining leaves. We said just now, however, that ferns have no flowers, so we will turn to something that grows on the wall opposite. This is the ivy-leaved toadflacks. It grows on walls and rocks, as the red valarian does, but it is a very different plant in appearance. The stems of the red valarion are tall and upright. Those of the tote flacks are slender and drooping. There is a large mass of it on the side of the wall, and we find that the root is at the highest point of the whole mass. The stems with the flowers and leaves hang down below the root. It is a trailing plant. There are, however, other roots clinging to the wall here and there below the main root. The plant, like several others, is able to throw out fresh roots from the joints of its stems, and these give it a firmer hold. The flowers are small, and their color is a pale lilac blue, with a bright yellow spot in the center. These flowers, too, are spurred. The leaves are smooth and thick, what is called fleshy. They are divided into five lobes or divisions and are not unlike an ivy leaf in shape. When we turn a leaf or two over we see that the underside of some is dark purple. This little plant is usually said to prefer a damp situation and to blossom from May till October. This wall beside the steps is certainly rather damp, for the moisture from the garden above soaks down to it. In my own garden, however, the ivy-leaved toad-flacks grows on some very old dry walls, and I have found it in flower in the middle of December. Neither the toad-flacks nor the red-villarian are really natives of England. They were brought to our country many hundreds of years ago. They have spread so much that they have now become wildflowers. In the same way, many others of our wildflowers were once unknown in England.

Now that we have come down the steps into the fold yard, we see that it lies a good deal below the house and garden. Built round the fold yard are the stables for the cart horses, the cow houses, and the great barn. the stables is the rickyard. That, like the garden, is above the fold yard. From it, there are only two or three steps to the door of the loft above the stables. It is there that we will go now. The wall of the loft is of stone and is very old, the roof is tiled. There is a little hole cut in the bottom of the door. You will see one like it in the door of the greenery. It is made so that old tip and the other cats can go in and chase mice.

Growing between the stones of the wall,

just by the tallet door,

is the plant I want to show you now.

It is the stone crop.

Some of the stems grow upright, while others are trailing.

At the top of each upright stem is a cluster of bright yellow flowers. Some of these are fully open and we see that each blossom has five pointed petals. The trailing stems have no flowers at all. They are barren, but the leaves on the barren stems are much more numerous and

close together than those on the upright flowering stems. These leaves are very curious. They are not flat like the leaves of the red valarion, the toad flacks and most other flowers. They are very thick and fleshy. Something like a short round pointed stick. They grow close against the stalk, not in pairs, but alternately. First a leaf on one side of the stalk, then a leaf on the other. They are a wreck too, that is, they point in the same direction as the stalk. On the baron stems the leaves grow so closely that they quite cover the stalk. They have a hot, sharp taste and the plant is sometimes called wall pepper. The roots are very thin and can spread easily through narrow chinks of the wall. We will see one more plant of the walls before we look for flowers elsewhere. Our next plant is not very common at Willow Farm. Still, I know where to look for it. Built against one side of the big barn in the fold yard is a little lean-toe shed. Often, there are calves in it, but just now we are more interested in something that is on the roof. Standing close to the wall of the shed is a cattle crib, a kind of big square box or trough on legs in which hay is put for the cattle. The shed is not very high and by standing on the crib we can scramble onto the roof. Here is the plant we want to see. It is the house leak of which a clump is growing between the tiles. Almost flat on the tiles is a dense mass of large green, fleshy leaves. These leaves are evergreen. They do not die and fall off in winter. From this cluster of leaves rise straight thick stems, nearly a foot high. The stems are thickly covered with erect rucked leaves which grow smaller towards the top of the stem. At the top of the stem is a cluster of very handsome, rosy red flowers. Each blossom is star-shaped when fully open and generally has 12 petals. If we could see the roots we should find them very thread-like or fibrous like those of other flowers we have been looking at today. I do not think I can very well show you the roots however we should have to pull up a plant and that would not please bend the cowman at all. There is a belief in country places that it is bad luck to disturb the house leak. That someone in the house on which it grows may soon have an ill fate afterwards. Certainly the plant is not growing on a house here, only on the calves caught. Still, Ben would blame us if we disturbed it and something were to happen. Besides, it would be a pity to disturb so handsome a plant, would it not? We have spent some time in looking at these flowers on the walls and roof because we think them very wonderful. We see how little soil they can have in which to grow and how, in dry weather, they can have very little moisture either. Yet the leaves of several of them are thick and fleshy, and the flowers of some are large

and beautiful. What could be more handsome than the blossoms of the wall flower, the red valarion, and the house-leak? After four, three handsome weeds.

At the end of the drive, near the... Chapter 4 Three handsome weeds

At the end of the drive near the front door, another white gate leads to the nag stables where Mr. Hammond keeps the two horses which he rides and drives. Billy, the old brown pony, has a little stable on his own close by, and further on are the greenery and the poultry yard. Perhaps you have heard the saying, ill weeds grow a pace. It is certainly a true one, for most of the plants which we call weeds grow quickly and well wherever they are allowed to remain. We shall not have far to look for the three weeds which I want to show you this morning. The first of them is the stinging nettle. It grows round the wood pile in the middle of the poultry yard, yard and there are great clumps of it beside the hedge which divides the poultry yard from the

kitchen garden. It is really a very handsome plant, though you may not have thought so before. Look how tall and straight the stems are, and how evenly and regularly the dark green-pointed leaves grow from it. They grow in pairs on opposite sides of the stem and are serrated. There is something rather unusual about the stem of the nettle which we will notice at once. I have brought out a pair of thick leather gloves so that we can pick a stem without being stung.

You know what shape the trunks of trees are? Round? Yes, round or nearly so. So are the stems of most plants. The stems of the red valerian are round. The stem of the nettle,, is square, or if not perfectly square, it has four distinct sides. Perhaps you had never noticed this before, for the nettle is certainly not a plant with which one cares to have very much to do. Both the The stems and leaves are covered with tiny hairs. These hairs are really small hollow tubes ending in a sharp point. The small greenish yellow flowers of the stinging nettle grow in long feathery clusters of stalks which spring from the main stem close to a pair of leaves. The young leaves of the nettle are said to be very nice boiled as vegetables. I cannot say that I have ever eaten them myself. Years ago, country people used to take a great deal of nettle tea as medicine in spring. Nowadays they seem to prefer patent medicines from the chemist shop. A die is made from the roots of the nettle and another die from the stem and leaves. The young leaves are tops when chopped up are good for poultry, especially for turkeys. So nettles are useful, you see, not merely stinging weeds. The nettle, too, is a relation of the hemp plant from which we get our string and ropes. You may sometimes see or hear of the white, red, and yellow dead nettle, but these are not really nettles at all. Their leaves are somewhat similar, but they are quite different plants. Hanging over this great patch of nettles by the hedge, there is another weed, the traveler's joy, or old man's beard. Its stem has climbed not only up the hedge, but high into a hot-horned bush which stands there. It has many small white feathery flowers with a pleasant scent.

On each leaf stem there are usually five leaflets, one at the end of the stem and two pairs lower down. These leaf stems are long and tough and it is chiefly by them that the plant can climb as it does. They twine round any branch or twig they touch and give the traveler's joy a firm support. I have seen trees and woods covered with this plant to a height of 20 feet from the ground. In the autumn and early winter you would admire the traveler's joy as much as you do now. The flowers will certainly be gone, but each seed which takes the place of a blossom will have a little plume of silky white threads attached to it, a sort of feathery tail. serve as wings by which the seeds are often carried long distances by the wind. The seeds of some other plants which we shall see have something of the same kind. There is another climbing plant in the hedge, the large bindweed.

To look at it, however, we will go round into the garden where there is more of it than Mrs. Hammond cares to see.

It is certainly a beautiful plant, with its large three-sided pointed leaves,

and its great pure white bell-shaped flowers, something like the mouth of a trumpet. In the farmhouse garden, however, it is certainly a weed, a plant in the wrong place. We see that at once. Close to the hedge are some gooseberry and current bushes, and into these the bindweed has climbed. The bindweed stems are twined round the stems and branches of the bushes till they are almost hidden by it and are bent down by the weight. The bindweed climbs, as we see, by twisting its stem round the tree to which it clings. But though it is a climbing plant, its stems can grow for a foot or more from the ground without support. Some of the shoots of the bindweed are two or three feet away from the stems of the fruit bushes, but they have grown unsupported until they could reach an over-hanging bow and cling to that. Every now and then, Dan, who looks after the garden when he has time, cuts off all the bindweed close to the ground and pulls some of it up by the roots, but fresh shoots soon appear again. It is of little use to dig up the ground near the bushes, for the bindweed is twisted all among their roots. You think the bindweed and the travellers joy beautiful flowers, and so they are. At the same time, these plants are far more troublesome and dangerous weeds than the stinging nettle. Nearly all plants that cling to other plants do harm. They prevent the stems and boughs to which they cling from swelling freely. See how tightly the bindweed stems are twisted round the bows of the current bush. Ivey, bindweed, and other clinging plants often seriously injure valuable trees in this way. CHAPTER V. Clover I said all I could to make you admire the nettle, and to see what a handsome and even useful plant it is. I am afraid, however, that you do not care much for it. I do not see that any of you have gathered a handful to take home. When we go in to dinner presently, if Mrs. Hammond were to say, well, you have green peas or nettle tops, I believe you would all say, peas if you please. So, we had better look for a flower that you may like better. We will go to Ashmead, where the cows are grazing, and we'll find some clover. Mr. Hammond grows clover in some of his fields every year. Those of you who have been at Willow Farm before and have walked about the farmer's fields know this, where we saw the bay lift sowing clover broadcast. Besides the fields of clover, however, there is always plenty of it growing among the meadow grass. We find some directly we go through the gate into ashmade. It is a plant with a bright, purplish red blossom. Let us sit down and examine it carefully. The blossom is a little knob or ball of color almost round. It is made up of a great many little purple stalks, standing up bright and very close together.

Pull a few of these stalks from the blossom and put their lower ends between your lips.

They are quite sweet like sugar.

Nearly all flowers contain honey

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