WILD DAPHNE
Stet,—I have just received The Spectator of January 17th, in which I note an article by Mr. H. E. Bates referring to " Daphne mezereum " growing wild, and asking readers for any other instances. Curiously enough, in the early part of May, 1940, I was in Camden Maine and went to the local grower to get a potted plant. At the entrance of the greenhouse I met an old man with a bunch of "Daphne rnezereum" which he had brought to the frame in order to ask the name, and the framer had been unable to tell him. He told me that it grew wild in the neighbourhood and pointed to some fields and woods about half a mile away, where he said he had found it. As the Bowers were already on the wane, and as I was unable to go in that direction for another week or more, I concluded that it would be too late in the year to look for some myself. Spring comes very late in that part of the country, as the frost remains in the ground until April, and last year it was unusually late ; but there are no gardens hardly in the neighbourhood from which it could have escaped. In Switzerland in the garden even at a height of r,800 feet it is always the first thing to come out, in February or early March.—
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