2 FAMILIAR WILD FLOWERS 



mint is a perennial, and in this, as in all the mints, the 

 root-stock creeps freely, so that when the plant has once 

 taken hold of the ground it becomes very difficult to 

 eradicate it. From the low spreading branches that lie 

 near the ground, the flowering stems are each year thrown 

 up. The leaves are borne on stalks, and have their outlines 

 freely toothed. Like the other labiates, the stems are seen 

 to .be four-angled when cut across, and the leaves spring 

 from them in pairs. This quadrangular section and opposite 

 growthx)f the foliage may be very well seen in the white 

 dead-nettle, the ground-ivy, and the self-heal, or the 

 stachys, all plants that figure in our series. The upper 

 leaves in the corn-mint are smaller than the lower, and the 

 flowers are arranged in rings in their axils. The flowers 

 themselves are small individually, but the delicacy of their 

 colour and the dense clusters in which they grow give them 

 collectively an importance the units may lack, and ring 

 after ring of these blossoms form as a whole a conspicuous 

 and welcome addition to the flora of the fields and meadows, 

 and one that has not escaped the attention of our poets. 

 Peele, one of the older writers, a poet of the middle of the 

 sixteenth century, has the following lines : 



" Under the hawthorn and the poplar tree, 

 The humble florets all delight to be ; 

 The primrose and the purple hyacinth, 

 The dainty violet and the wholesome minthe." 



The mint is by many of the older herbalists spelt 

 " minthe/' or we should feel that the recognised licence of the 

 poet nad been rather exceeded when mint by a perversion of 

 spelling was 'made to rhyme with hyacinth. In Brown's 

 *' Pastorals " we are invited to wander " into the meadows 



