42 LABIATE 



The wild Thyme varies much in diflferent situations, not only in the 

 degree of hairiness of its stems and leaves, but also as to size and odour. 

 Sometimes, instead of the dark-green glossy foliage, we find specimens with 

 leaves white with down, and occasionally the flowers are white. When 

 growing on dry, exposed situations it is small and prostrate, but when 

 beneath the shelter of furze or broom it has a stalk a foot or more high. 



Mr. Babington has expressed his opinion that two species of Thyme are 

 included in that described as serpyllum ; one is T. chama'drys, the other the 

 true T. serpyllum, but as the difference is chiefly in their habit of growth, they 

 require to be examined while growing. He remarks : " In T. serpyllum, there 

 is a difference between the flowering shoot and that intended to extend the 

 plant. Quite prostrate and rooting shoots are produced each year, which 

 grow from the end of the shoots of the preceding j^ear, and do not flower ; 

 also there spring from the other axils of these old prostrate parts of the plant 

 short, erect, or ascending shoots, which form a linear series, and each of which 

 terminates in a capitate spike, consisting of a very few whorls, and which die 

 back to the base after the seed has fallen. The growing shoot is perennial, 

 but the flowering shoot is annual. In T. chanuedrys there is no such manifest 

 separation between the flowering and young shoots. The terminal bud often 

 produces the strongest shoot, which itself ends in flowers, differing thus 

 from the terminal shoot of T. serpyllum, which always ends in a flowerless 

 shoot. It wants the regularity of T. serpyllum, and presents a dense irregular 

 mass of leafy shoots and flowers intermixed." Sir J. D. Hooker regards 

 T. chammdrys as a sub-species of T. serpyllum. 



The garden Thyme {T. vulgaris) is a native of Southern Europe ; it is 

 largely cultivated in herb gardens for the London market. It has the same 

 qualities as the wild Thyme, yielding camphor in distillation with water. It 

 is in Spain infused in the pickle used to preserve olives, and l)efore the intro- 

 duction of Oriental spices entered largely into the cookery of all European 

 countries. 



5. Marjoram {Origanum). 



Common Marjoram {0. vulgdre). — Leaves stalked, broadly egg- 

 shaped, blunt, sometimes slightly toothed ; bracts egg-shaped, longer than 

 the calyx ; flowers in crowded panicles ; perennial. Our hilly, chalky dis- 

 tricts, bright as they are with the many flowers which thrive on their soil, 

 would yet lose much of their autumnal beauty if they were deprived of their 

 masses of Marjoram — 



" The Marjoram sweet in shepherd's posies bonnd." 



On dry, sunny hedge-banks, on towering cliffs, enlivening the road-side for 

 miles together, the handsome and fragrant flowers are very common, and, as 

 we see them on some rounded hill, we remember how both in this and other 

 lands they are blooming at such elevations as to deserve their pretty and 

 expressive name, " Joy of the Mountain." All about Dover the flower is 

 most plentiful — so plentiful that when we find ShaksjDcre making the words 

 " Sweet Marjoram " the passwords between King Lear and Edgar, we feel 

 how likely the walk towards the cliffs would be to suggest it. Near the 



