82 ORD. V. Conglomerate. PLANTAGO MAJOR. 
Class Tetrandria. Ord. Monogynia. L. Gen. Plant 142. 
Ess. Gen. Ch. Cal. 4-fidus. Cor. A-fida: limbo reflexo. Staména 
longissima. Caps. 2-locularis, circumscissa. 
Sp. Ch. P. foliis ovatis glabris, scapo tereti, spica flosculis imbricatis. 
THE root is perennial, short, thick, and puts forth several long 
whitish fibres, which strike down in a perpendicular direction: the 
leaves are oval, procumbent, irregularly subdentated, of a pale 
green colour, ribbed ; ribs, commonly seven, often five, and 
sometimes nine: the footstalks are long, concave above, and proceed 
from the root; the flower-stems are generally three or four, about 
a span high, downy, round, smooth below the spike, and somewhat 
_ incurvated; the calyx is of four leaves, somewhat erect, oval, 
obtuse, smooth, and persistent; the flowers are small, produced 
on a long cylindrical imbricated spike, which occupies more than 
half the stem; each flower consists of a roundish tube, narrow at 
the mouth, and the four segments are heart shaped, pale, withered, 
and bent downwards; the bractea is oval, fleshy, and larger than 
the calyx; the stamina are whitish, longer than the corolla, and the 
anthere are purple: the germen is oval, the style short and 
filiform, and the stigma simple; the capsule divides horizontally in 
the middle; and, according to Mr. Curtis, contains about twenty 
unequal brown seeds. It grows commonly in pastures and way- | 
sides, and flowers in June. 
The name Plantago, is omitted in the London Pharmacopeeia, 
but it is still retained in the Materia Medica of the Edinburgh 
college, in which the leaves are mentioned as the pharmaceutical 
part of the plant: these have a weak herbaceous smell, and an 
austere bitterish subsaline taste; and their qualities are said to be 
refrigerant, attenuating, substyptic, and diuretic. 
Plantago was formerly reckoned amongst the most efficacious of 
vulnerary herbs; and by the peasants the leaves are now commonly 
applied. to fresh wounds, and cutaneous sores. Inwardly, they 
