218 FLOWERS OF THE ROADSIDES AND HEDGES 
Wood Basil is usually about 1 ft. high, The flowers are in full 
bloom in June, July, and August. The plant is perennial, propagated 
by division. 
The stamens and stigma vary considerably in structure. The 
nectaries and the receptacle for honey are of the usual labiate type. 
The tube of the corolla is 10-13 mm. long, and the honey fills it up to 
a height of 3 mm. The inferior lobe of the style forms a broad, lance- 
shaped lamina, which is turned down, and is not distinctly covered with 
wart-like knobs. The upper one is narrower and shorter, and varies 
in size. The stamens may all or partly be useless. The Cabbage 
White Butterfly (Peerds brassice) and Satyrus visit it. The herma- 
phrodite flowers may be either large, and the anthers ripe first, or 
small, when the anthers ripen with the stigma. 
The nutlets are free, and fall off around the parent plant, which is 
thus dispersed by its own agency. 
This is a rock-loving species growing on rock soil, which may be 
a sand soil or a lime soil. 
A fungus, Puccinta menthe, attacks the leaves. Two moths, 
Hadena Chenopodit, Stephensia brunnichella, and a Heteropterous 
insect, Lysarcorts melanocephalus, are found on Wood Basil. 
Clinopodium, Dioscorides, is from the Greek cine, bed, fous, foot. 
The tufted whorls have been compared to the castor of a bed, and the 
second name refers to its common occurrence. 
This pretty wildflower is called Field, Stone, Wood Basil, Basil- 
weed, Bed’sfoot, Horse Thyme. 
It was regarded as an emblem of the devil in Crete, and placed as 
a charm on window ledges. It was employed in love matters, It was 
said to wither in the hands of the impure. Bacon said that if exposed 
too much to the sun it changed into Wild Thyme, an incipient idea 
of evolution. In Persia there is a couplet, which, translated, runs thus: 
“The basil tuft that waves 
Its fragrant blossom over graves”. 
EsseNTIAL SPECIFIC CHARACTERS :— 
251. Clinopodium vulgare, L.—Stem erect, slender, leaves dentate, 
ovate, bracts setaceous, forming an involucre, flowers purple, in dense 
whorls, branched, axillary, calyx straight. 
