16 SCROPHULAPJNE.^ 



capsules egg-shaped; root-stock tuberous and perennial. The knots, which 

 give to this plant its specific name, must be looked for in the roots, and not 

 on the stem. The root consists of a number of white tubers, generally round, 

 and strung together by fibres, and varying from the size of a pea to that of a 

 large marble. These knobs, resembling the glandular swellings produced by 

 disease, apparently induced the older observers of plants to believe them to 

 be efficacious in these maladies, and hence the name of the genus. The 

 plant had much popular repute in former days, for Gerarde censures " divers 

 Avho doe rashly teach that if it be hanged about the necke, or else carried 

 about one, it keepeth a man in helth." The Knotted Figwortis a tall slender 

 plant, three or four feet high, bearing in June and July repeatedly-forked 

 panicles of flowers. These flowers are very small for the size of the herb ; 

 they are almost globular, and of dull purple, mingled with greenish-yellow. 

 The whole plant has a disagreeable odour, like the elder, and the roots are 

 slightly bitter. 



2. Water Figwort (S. aqudtica). — Smooth ; leaves oblong, heart-shaped, 

 blunt ; flowers in close panicles ; bracts linear, blunt ; sepals with a broad 

 membranous margin ; stem 4-winged ; root-stock creeping, perennial. This 

 plant is common by the sides of ditches and streams, attracting our attention 

 by its size, rather than its beauty. Its stem is commonly from two to five 

 feet high, hollow and succulent, but the editor of this edition has measured 

 examples in Cornwall that exceeded ten feet. The flowers are from eight to 

 fifteen in a cluster, of purplish-brown colour. Its leaves are serrated with 

 rounded notches, and are larger and of dark dull green. The stems become 

 very rigid as the plant dries, and the Rev. 0. A. Johns observes, that they 

 are then very troublesome to anglers, as their lines become entangled among 

 the withered capsules. The plant was foi'merly called AVater Betony, 

 Bishop's-leaves, and Br-oad-wort, and in France it is termed Herhe de Siege, 

 because it is said that during the siege of Rochelle by Cardinal Richelieu, in 

 1628, the soldiers of the garrison supported themselves during a season of 

 famine by eating the roots of the plant, which abounded in the moist lands 

 in the neighbourhood. Though many good botanists have stated that this 

 is the plant which afforded relief in the emergency, yet the roots are so small 

 that the author of these pages thinks that the Knotted Figwort, often found 

 in moist places, was probably the species to which the soldiers were indebted, 

 as its roots, though slightly bitter, are much larger. A decoction of the 

 leaves of the AVater Figwort is used in country places as a medicine for some 

 domestic animals, but cattle refuse its herbage, and it is eaten only by the goat. 

 AVasps are very fond of its flowers, the carrion-like colour and rank odour 

 appearing to have special reference to their tastes ; the shape of the corolla, 

 too, corresponds with the shape of their heads. Mr. Babington says that 

 these flowers are sometimes milk-white. The French call the Figworts 

 Scrofulaire ; the Germans, Braunwurz ; the Dutch, Schrofelkruid ; the Italians, 

 Scrofalaria ; the species was very generally applied some centuries ago in 

 most European countries as a cataplasm to tumours. M. Marchant stated 

 some years since, in his Memoirs of the French Academy, his opinion that 

 this plant is identical with the Equetaia of the Brazilians, which is so 

 celebrated as correcting the disagreeable flavour of the medicinal senna; 



