Rest-Harrow (Ononis spinosa).
The Rest-Harrow or Wrest-Harrow is one of those plants
whose presence in the pasture is said to indicate its poverty or the neglect of the cultivator. In Sussex and Hampshire it is known as the Cammock. It is a perennial low shrub, sometimes creeping near the ground, and at others growing more erect. The rootstock often creeps underground, a habit to which the plant owes its popular name, as it is said to be so tough as to wrest the harrow from the even tenor of its way. The more prostrate form is covered with viscid hairs; the more erect-growing plants are spiny. In the latter condition it is said that only donkeys will eat it, and hence its scientific name ononis, from onos, an ass, but it is open to question whether the ass has any fondness for it if he can get other food. The flowers are of the usual papilionaceous structure already described (see pp. 7, 43, 48, 50, 52, 72), and may be borne either singly or in racemes. They are pink in colour; the petal known as the standard is very large in this species, and streaked with a fuller red. The pod is very small, and in the hairy form is not so long as the calyx. The flower does not secrete honey, but in spite of this fact, it seems to be chiefly if not exclusively fertilized by bees, who are evidently fooled by its resemblance to other flowers of the same form that do offer refreshment to insect visitors. The worker-bees, however, get pollen for their pains, but the males are sadly disappointed.
Rest- Harrow will be found flowering in dry wastes from June to September.
There is another species, the Small Rest-Harrow (O. reclinata), an annual with spreading hairy, viscid stems, only a few inches in length, stalked rosy flowers not half the size of spinosa, and a hairy pod as long as the calyx, or longer. It is exceedingly local, and has only been reported as occurring on sandy cliffs it Devon, Wigton and Alderney. Flowering in June and July.
