Common Flax is an annual plant, with erect slender stems about a foot and a half high. Its narrow lance-shaped leaves are arranged alternately and at a distance from each other. The flowers are large, and purplish-blue in colour. Five is the number dominating the structure of the flower: sepals, petals, stamens, glands, ovary (5 cells), styles--all in fives. It flowers in June and July.
There are three other species that are truly wild in Britain:--
I. Purging Flax (_L. catharticum_). A smaller species, half a foot high, with _white_ flowers, affecting heaths and pastures. It has opposite, very narrow leaves, and the unopened buds nod. Flowers June to September.
II. Perennial Flax (_L. perenne_). A very rare perennial plant with exceedingly narrow leaves, alternate on the numerous wiry stems. Plant about 2 feet high. The large bright-blue flowers, which may be found from June to September, are of two forms, long-styled and short-styled, like the Primroses (_see_ p. 2), and for a similar purpose. On chalky soils from Durham to Essex.
III. Narrow-leaved Flax (_L. angustifolium_). Leaves alternate, as narrow as in the last species, but smaller and not so plentiful. Flowers smaller and paler, petals smaller in proportion to the calyx. Flowers May to September. Sandy and chalky pastures, not farther north than Lancashire.
=Long-rooted Cat’s-ear= (_Hypochæris radicata_).
Cat’s-ear is one of those plants that are passed by the rambler as being “perplexing hawkweeds which no one but a German botanist understands.” It is not exactly a hawkweed, though it comes pretty close to that family, and roughly may be said to resemble them. Of the Composite flowers we have already dealt with, it will be seen that the Cat’s-ear has a blossom similar in structure to _Sonchus_ (page 114), _Taraxacum_ (page 20) and _Tragopogon_ (page 84). It has a perennial tap-root, from which arises and spreads a circlet of many rough hairy leaves, their edges scalloped; there are no stem leaves. The flower-stem is branched, each branch bearing but one flower-head. The involucral bracts are in several series, laid one over the other like tiles. All the corollas are strap-shaped, toothed at the free end, yellow. The pappus or down that surrounds the fruit consists of a row of feathery hairs, surrounded by an outer row of shorter bristles. The flowers are longer than the involucre. Flowers June to September. There are two other British species:--