Primrose Weeds
Anger against the nightingale in Hertfordshire may be paralleled with an example of animosity against the primrose in Devonshire. An admirer of this sweetest of wild flowers, looking at a hillside wholly coloured with the blossom, was wondering whether it would be a sin to dig up some roots for transference to her less well-favoured home. Even the gutters of a new road thereabouts are full of the blossom, as are bank, and field, and common. The hesitant doubts were presently resolved by a farmer. "The only way I can see," he said, "is to burn the primroses. They are the worst weed we have! " I thought of an Australian complaint. A Tasmanian once lamented to me the prevalence of the sweet briar, imported from England. It was, he said, a terrible weed. One never knows. In one garden the aconite is regarded as the worst of the weeds, and I once owned a garden where the celandine proved wholly invincible. It grew from bulbous roots, it grew from seed, it grew from the axils, and the removal of barrow loads seemed to make no difference at all.
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