There is another species, the Small Rest-Harrow (_O. reclinata_), an annual with spreading hairy, viscid stems, only a few inches in length, stalked rosy flowers not half the size of _spinosa_, and a hairy pod as long as the calyx, or longer. It is exceedingly local, and has only been reported as occurring on sandy cliffs in Devon, Wigton and Alderney. Flowering in June and July.
One of the prettiest of wayside plants is the golden-starred Agrimony, growing on the waste green flanks of the road and making it beautiful. It is a perennial plant, with a short woody rootstock, and “interruptedly pinnate” leaves, somewhat resembling those of the Silver-weed, the leaflets increasing in size as they near the terminal leaflet. The flowers are borne on that kind of inflorescence called a _raceme_, in which each flower is attached to the central stem by a stalk of its own. Were these stalks suppressed the inflorescence would be termed a _spike_, and indeed some authors have so described the flower-clustering of Agrimony. The flowers are little roses, and consist of a top-shaped spiny calyx, tubular, with contracted mouth and five overlapping lobes; five golden petals, ten or more stamens, and two carpels sunk in the calyx-tube, their styles and two-lobed stigmas protruding. They do not secrete honey, and are seldom visited by insects.
As the lower fruits ripen the raceme lengthens, and concurrently the calyx-tubes harden and assume a drooping position, owing to the downward curving of their little foot-stalks.
There is a variety with resinous-scented, larger, more crowded flowers, of local occurrence. Agrimony was formerly held in some repute as a medicinal plant, and from this circumstance it gets its name. The ancient Greeks had a word _argema_ signifying the affection of the eyes to which we apply the term cataract, and a plant which was reputed to cure argema they called _argemone_, a word which has since been corrupted into agrimony. “Yarb doctors” still give it a place in their pharmacopœia.
Occasionally the rambler will find the Flax in cornfields and wastes, by oil-mills and in the neighbourhood of railway stations. Wherever it may be found it is an escape from cultivation. As a truly wild plant the “most used” flax is not known: in cultivation, as the parent of linen garments, it has been known from the infancy of the human race. To-day the exports of flax and linen from the United Kingdom are worth about £5,500,000 per annum. It is therefore a plant that would be entitled to respectful consideration when we meet it, even if it had no grace or beauty to commend it to us.