234 LABIATE. 



Caps, and are purple and white. They appear in summer and 

 autumn. Native of Dahuria. 



S. orientalis {Easter-n Skidl-Cap). — About 9 inches or i foot 

 high: the leaves are shortly egg-shaped, and rather deeply 

 toothed, and downy. The flowers are yellow, in quadrangular 

 spikes, appearing in summer and autumn. Native of the 

 Levant. 



Stachys {Hedge Nettle). — A very considerable genus as to 

 numbers, but there are very few of the species of an ornamental 

 character. Those best worthy of cultivation for ornament are 

 worthy chiefly on account of their foliage, and one species, for 

 the sake of its densely woolly grey or white leaves, has been 

 more or less used in bedding out. They are plants of the 

 easiest culture, thriving in ordinary garden-soil, and increasing 

 freely by division. 



S. coccinea {Scarlet Hedge-Nettle). — A showy plant, worthy 

 of a place in large collections on account of its flowers. The 

 leaves are heart-shaped, hairy, and toothed. The flowers are 

 produced in whorled spikes, and are brilliant scarlet. Flowers 

 in summer and autumn. Native of South America. Height, 

 2 or 3 feet. 



S. germanica, syn. S. lanata {German Hedge-Nettle). — This 

 plant is best kno^^^l in gardens under the latter name. Its 

 woolly stems and leaves are very peculiar and striking, but the 

 flowers are small and worthless for ornament. It is very well 

 worth a place in mixed borders in any collection for the sake 

 of the foliage effect. The plant forms low masses of oblong, 

 lance-shaped, densely woolly, white leaves. The stems rise to 

 the height of i8 inches or 2 feel, and are as densely clothed 

 with the same white wool, having a few distant pairs of leaves 

 at the joints; the flowers are in small woolly whorls, and are 

 purple ; appearing early in summer and lasting long. A rare 

 native of England, and plentiful on the Continent, where it 

 varies much in the form of the leaves, the density of the 

 woolly covering, and the number of the flowers in whorls. It 

 has been used, and is yet used to some extent in bedding-out 

 for edgings, for which it is very fit. 



Thymus {Thyme). — There are many forms of Thyme cul- 

 tivated in gardens, and independently of their agreeable frag- 

 rance they are worthy of very general use, for being natives of 

 dry, stony, or rocky places in nature, they are well adapted 

 for naturalising in such places, and for clothing old walls and 

 ruins. There is no great distinction of character between many 

 of the so-called species. They are all, or nearly all, low-growing, 

 more or less woody plants, and more or less strongly resembling 



