Pink to Red Flowers 247 



These flowers are subtended by conspicuous bracts, hence 

 the name bracteosa. 



The Romans had a proverb, " Sell your coat and buy 

 Betony," and another old saying was, " May you have more 

 virtues than Betony." Antoninus Musa, physician to the 

 Emperor Augustus, wrote in high praise of its powers, stat- 

 ing that it would cure forty-seven of the ills to which human 

 flesh is heir. 



Franzins, in his History of Brutes, alludes to its healing 

 virtues for animals. He says of the stag, " When he is 

 wounded with a dart, the only cure he hath is to eate some 

 of the herbe called Betony, which helpeth both to draw out 

 the dart and to heale the wound." 



Sir William Hooker is our authority for saying that the 

 common name is a corruption of Bentonic, ben meaning 

 " head," and ton " good " or " tonic." 



Pedicularis grcenlandica, or Elephant's Head, is so-called 

 from the close resemblance of its blossoms to a miniature 

 elephant's head, the flat forehead, long drooping ears and 

 curving trunk being all perfectly outlined. 



This Pedicularis has slender, rather brittle, red stalks, 

 which are clothed with many small, fern-like, reddish 

 leaves, and a group of tall fringed foliage grows up about 

 it from the ground. It is a tall plant, often attaining a 

 height of eighteen inches, and its terminal spikes are long 

 and densely flowered with tiny dull red blossoms, which 

 have a toothed calyx that is nearly as long as the tooth of 

 the corolla. The corolla is two-lipped, the upper lip, or 

 galea, being concave and having a long thread-like beak, 

 while the lower one is three-lobed. 



