ful blue Corn Flower or Corn Bluebottle. It is
no more welcome to the farmer than the Poppy and the Charlock are. It is
a perennial, and therefore difficult to get rid of. Moreover when we
pull up a stem we find it quite hard work, it is so tough. These tough
stems blunt the sickles of the reapers and the knives of the reaping
machine.

[Illustration left: CREEPING FIELD THISTLE.]

[Illustration right: FIELD SCABIOUS.]

[Illustration left: EVERGREEN ALKANET.]

[Illustration center: CORNFLOWER.]

[Illustration right: SMALLER BINDWEED.]

[Illustration: CHARLOCK.]

To us it is only a very beautiful flower. The florets in the centre of
each blossom are dark purple, but the outer ones are of a brighter blue.
The leaves are long and narrow; those near the bottom of the stem are
rather broader than those higher up. The stems themselves are not round,
but angular. We can feel corners or angles as we hold one in our hand.
They are also covered with a kind of down.

There is another flower which we shall see better if we come to the
stubble field after the wheat is cut; but some of it is near the gate
to-day. This is the Smaller Bindweed. We see that it is a relation of
the Large Bindweed in the garden hedge. It has leaves and flowers of the
same shape, but the flowers are smaller, and are pink and white. Those
of the Large Bindweed are rarely anything but pure white.

This is another troublesome weed here. It does not climb, as the Large
Bindweed does, but creeps along the ground, twining round everything it
meets. In the potato field it is often even more troublesome than here.
Corn is _cut_, but potatoes are _dug_ out of the ground. The Small
Bindweed forms such a thick carpet over the field, and twines round the
potato stems so closely, that it is often very difficult to dig up the
potatoes.

Here is another little flower which I am glad to show you now, the
Scarlet Pimpernel. This and the Poppy are the only _scarlet_ wild
flowers we have. There are many _pink_, and also many _purple_ flowers,
but only these two are really _scarlet_.

The Pimpernel differs from the Poppy in almost everything except its
colour. The Poppy has a tall stout stem and its blossoms are very
large. The Pimpernel trails on the ground and has tiny flowers. The
blossoms of the Poppy have four petals, those of the Pimpernel have
five. These are a beautiful scarlet, but not _quite_ so bright a scarlet
as those of the Poppy.

The leaves gro