156 TYPES OF BRITISH PLANTS 
wants, he forces back the short arm of the lever, and the 
long arm brings the pollen-bearing anther smartly upon 
his back, to avoid any possibility of a bad shot. I cannot 
go here into all the various ingenious contrivances of the 
labiates to secure the proper deposition of pollen, but 
you will find elaborate details in Mr. Step’s Romance of 
Wild Flowers, which I mentioned before. The Verbena, 
or Vervain, a rough-looking plant often found by the 
a 
VERBENA, 
wayside, with tall straggling stems and 
spikes of small lilac flowers, is interesting 
as a plant that has come down in the 
world. In ancient times, Verbena was 
prominent at the worship of the gods of 
Rome; the priests wore chaplets made 
from it upon their foreheads, and bundles 
of it were used to sweep out the sacred 
temples. I believe that in England up 
to the Middle Ages brooms of Vervain 
were similarly employed, but I cannot 
tell you the exact evidence. 
The plantains we must pass by, and go 
at once to the beautiful Speedwell tribe 
which includes the Foxglove and the 
Mulleins. The perfect blue of the Ger-~ 
mander Speedwell, or Bird’s Eye, which 
lines the banks in May, picks it out at 
once, and we may examine it a little 
more closely, for it shows some interesting 
variations from the ordinary type of our 
\ chapter. The corolla is still all of one 
piece, but the “tube” is so short that it 
can hardly be called more than a ring. 
Instead of the usual five lobes, we have 
