St. John's Worts 



mark, written in Elizabethan days, has a curiously 

 modern ring about it, and often finds an echo in these 

 times when mineral remedies have so largely supplanted 

 vegetable. Culpepper's name, Tustan, is a corruption of 

 the more generally used Tutsan. Gerard correctly speaks 

 of "Tutsan," "whose leaves laid upon broken shins and 

 scabbed legs heal them, and many other hurts and 

 griefs, whereof it tooke his name Tout-same or Tutsane, 

 of healing all things." " Balm of Warrior's Wound " is 

 another pretty old name for it 



Like H. calycinum, this shrub does well in shady 

 places, and from June to quite late autumn is attractive, 

 first in its golden flowering and then in its warm- 

 tinted fruit and leaves. It does not usually exceed 

 three feet in height. 



A species much resembling H. Andros&mum, but 

 taller, is H. elatum, the so-called "Tall St John's Wort." 

 The flowers are slightly larger, the leaves distinctly 

 smaller, and the three styles longer than in the Tutsan ; 

 but as* relative qualities are always difficult marks of 

 identification, it is better to rely on the fact that in 

 H. elatum the fruit is cone-shaped and pointed instead of 

 globular, and the sepals beneath have their points re- 

 flexed. It is sometimes found wild in the West of 

 England, but is only an "escape," its true home being 

 the Canary Isles. 



The Goat-scented Hypericum, H. farcinum, is also a 



