22 JUNE 1951, Page 14

Some June Wild Flowers

Stopping on a drive back from Cambridge (sleepy after May-meek festivities), I took a nap on the Downs, and waking up found myself surrounded by flowers which 1 had not noticed before. It was as though Titania had sent her scouts to beguile me, a latter-day Bottom. I saw wild mignonette flourishing in a little recess where a barrowload of chalk had been removed. Though it has no smell, its modest grace justifies the name given it by our poet Cowper, the " Frenchman's Darling." The flower is yellow. 1 found also a great mullein, already some four feet high, though its blossom was not open, except for a few flowers at the base of the rod. Not far away stood a hairy henbane, its deeply indented leaves carelessly clustered beneath the yellow and purple blooms. Perhaps it was the proximity of this narcotic plant that had caused me to sleep so soundly on the warm Kentish hillside.