MINT FAMILY 



Self-heal is a plant that attends the traveller's way 

 on the roadsides of three continents; it inhabits the 

 lawns and dooryards, lives on the edge of the garden, 

 looks into wayside ditches, is ubiquitous, persistent, 



and gifted with the will 

 to live. The plant is 

 usually rusty and 

 dusty, the stem erect, 

 but when thrown 

 down can root at the 

 joints. Its long, flower- 

 ing season enables it to 

 seize an opportunity 

 whenever one comes, 

 and as a result it has 

 triumphed, though the 

 conditions, under which 

 w^e find it are usually 

 adverse. The lawn- 

 mower shaves it almost 

 to extinction, the gar- 

 den hoe is its daily 

 enemy, but, now and 

 then, when the fates 

 agree, one is surprised at the real beauty of the plant, 

 fresh and clean with its charming little purple- violet 

 flowers, few in number, gathered about its green clover- 

 like head. 



The plant was named by the Simplers, those makers 

 of the materia medica of the Middle Ages. The 

 Simpler's theory of medicine was delightfully simple; 

 it is known as the doctrine of signatures which was the 

 belief: First, that nature provides a plant to cure 



1 80 



Self-Heal. 



Brunilla vulgaris, Prunella 

 vulgaris 



