MARJORAM. 105 



Description. — The root is perennial, creeping, and furnished 

 with numerous slender fibres. The stems are erect, leafy, 

 quadrangular, purplish, clothed with short recurved downy 

 hairs, dichotomously branched towards the top, and from 

 twelve to eighteen inches in height. The leaves are opposite, pe- 

 tiolate, ovate, entire, or very slightly serrate, fringed with short 

 hairs, smooth, and of a deep yellowish green above, paler 

 and somewhat downy beneath. The flowers are axillary and 

 terminal, in dense panicled spike-like heads ; each flower is 

 subtended by an ovate-oblong, brownish purple, sessile bractea, 

 longer than the calyx. The calyx is cylindrical, striated, the 

 mouth of the tube closed with whitish hairs, the limb divided 

 into five nearly equal, purplish teeth. The corolla is bilabiate, 

 of a light purplish rose colour, the tube enlarged upwards, 

 longer than the calyx ; the upper lip erect, bifid, obtuse ; lower 

 lip patent, with three nearly equal rounded lobes, the middle 

 lobe crenate. The stamens are didynamous, erect, two rather 

 longer than the corolla, with ovate two-lobed anthers. The 

 germen is four-parted, with a filiform style, and a bifid, acute> 

 revolute stigma. The fruit consists of four ovate nuts or 

 achenia, situated in the bottom of the persistent calyx. Plate 

 31, fig. 2, (a) calyx and bractea, magnified; (6) entire flower, 

 magnified ; (c) stamen ; (d) pistil ; (e) section of the calyx to 

 show the nuts. 



This plant is a native of Europe, and occurs not unfrequently 

 in Britain, in dry hilly and bushy places, especially in a calca- 

 reous soil. It flowers in July and August. 



The generic name is derived from o^yawv, from Spo;, a 

 mountain, and yxvoc, joy ; these plants may truly be called the 

 joy of the hilly and romantic places in which they grow. 

 Bauhin considers the Origanum vulgare as the Cunilla bubula of 

 Pliny. The common name, Marjoram, is thought to be derived 

 from Marjamie, (or Maryamych,) the Arabic name for this 

 plant. 



There are several foreign species of Marjoram, some of 

 which have been used in medicine, as the Dittany of Crete, 

 (0. Dictamnus,) and the Cretan Marjoram, (0. Creticum.) The 

 sweet Marjoram, (0. Marjorama,) is well known in the gardens 

 of this country, being frequently used for culinary as well as 



