MINT FAMILY LABIATAE 
LION’S HEART 
Physostegia denticulata (Ait.) Britton 
The Lion’s Heart is a beautiful perennial with flowers nearly 
1 inch long and well worthy of a place in any flower garden. It 
grows in rather moist soil from Pennsylvania to Illinois and 
south to Florida and 
Texas, and blooms from 
June to August. 
The square stem is 
1-2 feet high, rather 
slender and unbranched 
or at least but little 
branched. The leaves are 
firm but not thick; the 
upper are sessile and the 
lower have slender pe- 
tioles. The leaves are the 
chief means of differen- 
tiating this plant from 
its close relative the 
False Dragonhead, page 
281, for in the latter they 
are sharply notched and 
toothed, and in the Lion’s Heart only faintly so. They are also 
greatly reduced in size toward the top of the stem here, but in 
the False Dragonhead the stem is cons>icuously leafy to the 
inflorescence. 
The loosely flowered spike blooms from the base upward, only 
a few flowers being open at a time. The bracts are lanceolate and 
little longer than the fruiting pedicels. The oblong-bell-shaped 
calyx is rather thin, membranous and swollen, and remains open 
in fruit. It is 1o-nerved and equally 5-toothed. The rose pink 
corolla is much longer than the calyx and the tube is gradually — 
enlarged upward and strongly 2-lipped at the end. The upper lip 
is concave and entire or nearly so, whereas the lower is 3-lobed 
and spreading, the middle lobe usually slightly notched at the 
end. The 4 stamens, in pairs of unequal length, are under the 
upper lip of the corolla. The ovary is deeply 4-parted and forms — 
in fruit 4 smooth ovoid-3-sided nutlets. 
282 
