NEPETA. 177 



cultivated soil. It prefers shady or stony places in parks, 

 fence-rows and rubbish, and grows with vigor, blooming 

 from May to August. It is a smooth perennial (U), here 

 prostrate on the ground only, though in Europe it is often 

 seen, with Moss and the True Ivy mantling the garden wall 

 and ancient ruin.* 



Analysis. What of the *Roots ? The slender square 

 stems creep extensively, forming loose mats, and putting 

 forth at each node a pair of leaves and a tuft of fibrous roots. 



The Z> eaves are all of one pattern, opposite, long-petioled, 

 palmi-veiiied, Tound-reniform (kidney-shaped), crenate, i. e., 

 with rounded teeth, on the margin. 



The large blue Flowers appear in loose axillary clusters. 

 The calyx is tubular, slightly curved, 15-veined, obliquely 

 5-toothed ; corolla a thrice-longer tube, 1' long, bilabiate, 

 upper lip 2-lobed, lower 3-lobed, with the middle lobe 

 largest. Looking within the corolla we find 4 didynamous 

 stamens, as in Linaria, 1 less than symmetry requires. They 

 stand in pairs tending toward the upper side, the inner pair 

 longer than the outer. The anther comprises 2 separate 

 lobes diverging at right angles, so that each pair in contact 

 forms a perfect cross. There is one slender style with a 

 4-parted ovary. 



here a soil and climate congenial to their nature, and grow spontaneously, as well as, 

 or even hetter, than in their own country. Such are the Dandelion, Mullein, Shep- 

 herd's Purse, Apple-tree. They generally betray their origin hy their habits, planting 

 themselves in gardens, fields, highways, wherever the soil has been stirred by the 

 plough, or trampled by the foot of man. The Indians call our Common Plantain " the 

 White Man's Plant," and say it springs up in his trail, wherever he plants his foot. 



* In 1850, a deputation waited upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer in England 

 respecting an abolition of duties on w r indow-glass. To enforce their views as to the 

 deleterious effects of unlighted dwellings, they exhibited a Ground Ivy plant, which 

 had grown for some years in a Wardian case on the top of a model of an abbey. 

 The branches which were turned toward the light were laden with leaves, flowers 

 and fruit ; while the stems which had trailed down between the model and the 

 window, and so lost the light, had no blossoms or fruit, and their leaves were scarce 

 one-tenth as large as the others. Every condition of growth, save that of sunlight, 

 was necessarily the same for all the branches of the plant, and the dwarfed, starved 

 state of one portion arose solely from that single deprivation. 



