[Footnote 4: _Flora of Surrey_, by J. A. Brewer, 1863.]
The clovers are indeed a perplexing family; and it is not surprising that the identification of the "shamrock" has given cause for dispute. Two of the smaller trefoils, for example, _trifolium scabrum_ and _striatum_, so closely resemble each other that a novice fails to appreciate the assurance given in the _Flora of Kent_ that they "can very easily be separated." It is doubtless easy to separate one twin from another twin, Dromio of Ephesus from Dromio of Syracuse, when once you know how to do so; but until you have acquired that knowledge there is material for a "comedy of errors." The majority of folk are much more apt to confuse plants than to distinguish them: witness such names as "fool's-parsley" and "fool's-watercress." Fools there are; yet anyone who has spent time in studying wildflowers, with no better aid than that of the popular books on the subject, will hesitate to pass judgment on such folly; for as so good an observer as Richard Jefferies said: "If you really wish to identify with certainty, and have no botanist friend and no _magnum opus_ of Sowerby to refer to, it is very difficult indeed to be quite sure."[5] We have to be thankful for small mercies in this matter; and it may be recognized that in some cases--generally where the similarity is _not_ great, as that between the strawberry-leaved cinquefoil and the wild strawberry, or between the feverfew and the scentless mayweed--the books occasionally give a word of advice to "the young botanist." Nine times out of ten, however, that young fellow, or perchance old fellow (for one may be young as a botanist, while by no means young in years), must shift for himself; and doing so, he will gradually learn by experience what a number of likenesses there are among plants, and how many mistakes may be made before a sure acquaintance is arrived at.
[Footnote 5: Essay on "Wild Flowers," in _The Open Air_.]
The name of "mockers" is sometimes given by gardeners to weeds that are so like certain valued plants as to be easily mistaken for them; and in the same way, in the search for wildflowers, one's attention is often distracted, as, for instance, if one is looking for the spineless meadow-thistle, the eye may be baffled by innumerable knapweed blossoms of the same hue; the clustered bell-flower will feign to be the autumnal gentian, its neighbour on the chalk downs; or the blossoms and leaves of the purple saxifrage on the high mountains are aped by the ubiquitous wild thyme.