In studying the application of natural vegetable forms to the various requirements of ornamental art--such, for instance, as the employment of bold, vigorous plants to stone or wood carving, and the more graceful and delicate growths to such fabrics as muslin and lace--we speedily find that in some cases we are unable to treat the whole of the plant we have selected for our purpose, owing to the limitations placed upon us by the requirements of the work, the exigencies of manufacture, or the nature of the materials in which our design is to be embodied. In some cases the flowers are too small in detail, or in the general mass, to accord well from the ornamentist’s point of view with the foliage of the plant; the white bryony (_Bryonia dioica_), for instance, though excellently adapted for muslins, could not in its flowering stage be satisfactorily treated for stonework on this account, though the foliage by itself is admirably suited for such purpose. In other instances we find the case reversed, the flower being large and beautiful in form, and the leaves unsuited, either from their insignificant size or want of beauty, to the purpose of the ornamentist; thus, while the leaves of the stonecrop (_Sedum acre_) are, from their minuteness, scarcely available for the purposes of design, the stellate flower is exceedingly beautiful in form, and admirably adapted for diapering and many other uses, when isolated from the rest of the plant. Where both leaf and flower are from their beauty and relative scale equally adapted for art-treatment, we are still, when circumstances require it, quite justified in employing either the one or the other by itself: where a monochrome arrangement is necessary, the leaves alone may, for example, be used; where a central radiate form, the flower may be introduced. The rosette or patera, so freely introduced both in ancient and mediæval art, is an example of this use of isolated floral forms.
The BRAMBLE or BLACKBERRY (_Rubus fruticosus_), a more familiar plant than the last, has, so far as we are aware, been but little used in ornamental art, though the _Rubus idæus_, or wild raspberry, may occasionally be seen in MSS. of the sixteenth century. The generic name is highly expressive of the prickly nature of the plant, being derived from an old Celtic verb, _reub_, to lacerate or tear away; while its English name, bramble, attests its indigenous nature, descending as it does from the Anglo-Saxon name for it, _bremel_. The stems, ordinarily of a pale purple colour and with a grey bloom upon them, are pentangular in section, the numerous prickles almost entirely confined to the ridges formed by the angles, and not occurring in the intermediate furrows; the leaves generally with five deeply serrated leaflets, a rich green on the upper surface, and covered with close white down on the lower; the petals of the blossom varying from pure white or delicate pink to a deep red; and the fruit of a rich crimson, so intense in colour as to appear almost black. The mode of growth