BLACK HORKHOUND. 25 



Description. — The root is perennial, woody and fibrous, send- 

 ing up several erect, straggling", branched, quadrangular stems, 

 tinged with purple and clothed with woolly, recurved hairs, and 

 rising two feet or more in height. The leaves are opposite, ovate, 

 crenate- serrate, petiolate, clothed with soft hairs, and of a shining 

 dull-green colour. The flowers are arranged in dense whorls in 

 the axils of the leaves ; the peduncles branched, subtended at 

 the base by setaceous fringed bracteae, which are shorter than the 

 calyx. The calyx is salver-shaped, and divided at the rim into five 

 short, mucronate, spreading teeth, and traversed by ten nerves or 

 ribs. The corolla is of a pale reddish-purple colour, yellowish at 

 the helmet ; the upper lip erect, ovate, slighly concave, unequally 

 crenate, villous ; lower lip trifid, lateral lobes roundish crenate, 

 middle lobe four times larger, emarginate, glabrous, marked with 

 white veins. The stamens are didynamous, with subulate fila- 

 ments shorter than the upper lip, terminated by oblong anthers of 

 two spreading cells. The germen is small, four-parted, surmounted 

 by a filiform style and a slender bifid stigma. The fruit consists of 

 four small oblong nuts, nearly black when ripe, enclosed in the 

 persistent calyx. Plate 26, fig. 3, (a) the calyx ; (b) pistil ; (c) 

 corolla opened to show the stamens. 



This plant is very common in waste places, hedges, and near 

 ruins, in the vicinity of towns and villages throughout Britain, 

 though less frequent in the north. It flowers in July and August. 



The generic name is derived from the Greek BaAAoT>j, so called 

 from BotWo), to reject, on account of its disagreeable odour. 

 It is supposed to be the plant mentioned by Dioscorides, under 

 that name. 



Some botanists make another British species of Fetid Hore- 

 hound, distinguished by its white flowers, longer tube of the 

 corolla and more prominent calycine teeth, but this appears to be 

 merely a variety of the above. 



Qualities. — The whole plant has a strong disagreeable odour, 

 particularly when bruised, and a nauseous bitter taste. The infu- 

 sion slightly reddens tincture of litmus, and becomes of a greenish - 

 brown colour by the addition of sulphate of iron. It has not been 

 chemically examined, but it appears to contain a fetid volatile oil, 

 bitter extractive, and various salts of potass. 



Dioscorides observes that this plant is an antidote to the bite of 

 a mad-dog ; and other writers have copied this erroneous statement. 



