plants of normally blue or purple flowers: thus the purple foxglove, blue Jacob’s ladder, pink herb-robert, purple snapdragon, blue harebell, and many others, are occasionally to be found with white blossoms. The ground-ivy, from its abundance, and also from its past and present medicinal use, may be met with in the works of various authors under a great choice of synonyms: of these alehoof is the most common; others, almost equally familiar, being creep-by-ground and cat’s-foot. When not in flower the general appearance of the marsh pennywort (_Hydrocotyle vulgaris_) is, to a casual observer, not altogether unlike that of the ground-ivy; but the pennywort is only met with on swampy ground, the leaves are peltate or shield-like, the stalk rising from the centre of the under side of the leaf, as we see it in the more familiar garden nasturtium (_Tropæolum majus_), differing in these respects from the ground-ivy. When in blossom, the contrast between the greenish-yellow flower of the pennywort and the deep purple of the flowers of the ground-ivy is too marked to permit of any chance of error. The only examples of the use of the ground-ivy
with which we are acquainted in the ornament of the past are in a small spandrel in one of the doorways at Rheims Cathedral, and on some of the flooring tiles from the ruins of the Abbey of Chertsey, Surrey. In the latter case the leaves are four in number, in a cruciform arrangement within a quatrefoil--a very simple yet true and effective treatment of the plant; for as the leaves grow, as we have already mentioned, in pairs, and as each pair of leaves is placed upon the stem at right angles to the pairs immediately above and beneath it, the effect produced in looking down upon the plant is necessarily cruciform in character. A great variety of these Chertsey tiles may be seen in the South Kensington Museum: though very simple in design, they afford excellent examples of the true application of the principles which should govern the introduction of natural forms, and are well worthy of the attention of the student of decorative art. In both these cases, Rheims and Chertsey, the leaves alone are employed, as the flowers, from their intricacy of detail and position upon the plant, would require the aid of colour to bring them out with due effect; hence, while the ground-ivy, during its period of flowering, is admirably adapted for surface decoration, muslins, wall-papers, and many other such-like purposes, it is but ill suited to relief-work in stone or wood. Refer to S. B. 172; E. B. 1055; F. L. vol. ii. 44; M. B. 28, for illustrations of the natural growth of the ground-ivy.