ILLUSTRATIONS. 113 



by the Meadow Sage,* a perennial with a root- tuft of stalked 

 ovate- oblong leaves, which are coarsely toothed and much 

 wrinkled, and a flower- stem from a foot to a foot and a half 

 high, furnished with a few smaller leaves near its base. The 

 flowers grow in a handsome elongated terminal spike, in which 

 they are arranged in whorls at short intervals. They have a 

 two-lipped calyx, the upper lip of which is split into three 

 small teeth, and the lower one cleft in two divisions. The 

 corolla is remarkably irregular in form ; it is much longer 

 than the calyx, and of a rich deep purple-blue, two-lipped 

 (whence the name labiate or lipped), the upper lip long arched 

 and convex, the lower spreading three-lobed, with the side 

 lobes minute, and the middle one large notched at the point. 

 The stamens are two in number and of peculiar form. Usually 

 a stamen consists of a slender thread called the filament, and 

 a small oblong case (the anther), consisting of two cells held 

 together by a central part called the connective, to which the 

 top of the filament is attached. This part, the connective, is 

 usually small and unnoticeable, but in the Salvia it is very 

 much enlarged, the real filament is short, while the connective 

 is long and slender, having a filament-like appearance, forming 

 two unequal arms, and bearing one of the anther-cells, a per- 

 fect one, at the end of the longer arm, and a smaller cell, 

 usually deformed, on the shorter arm. The ovary is four- 

 lobed, with an erect ovule in each lobe, and from between 

 these lobes grows the slender style, shortly cleft at top into 

 two stigmatic branches. The four lobes become separated into 

 four small seed-like nuts, which are enclosed in the permanent 

 calyx. The plant is rare in England. A commoner species, 

 Salvia Verbenaca, also bears purple flowers, but they are 

 smaller in proportion to the other parts. 



* Salvia pratensis Plate 17 D. 



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