FLORES LAVANDULiE. 477 



in Walton's "Description of an inn," ;ibout the year IGSO to 1G90, we 

 find the walls stuck round with ballads, where the sheets smelt of 

 lavender. . . .^ 



Lavender was well known to the botanist of the 16th centuiy. 



Description — The flowers of Common Lavender are produced in a 

 lax terminal spike, supported on a long naked stalk. They are arranged 

 in 6 to 10 whorls (verticillasters), the lowest being generally for remote 

 from those above it. A whorl consists of two cymes, each having, when 

 fully developed, about three flowers, below which is a rhomboidal 

 acuminate bract, as well as several narrow smaller bracts belonging to 

 the particular flowere. The calyx is tubular, contracted towards the 

 mouth, marked with 13 nerves and 5-toothed, the posterior tooth much 

 larger than the others. The corolla of a violet colour is tubular, two- 

 lipped, the upper lip with two, the lower with three lobes. Both corolla 

 and CJilyx, as well as the leaves and stalks, are clothed with a dense 

 tomentum of stellate hairs, amongst which minute shining oil-glands 

 can be seen by the aid of a lens. 



The flowei"s emit when rubbed a delightful fragrance, and have 

 a pleasant ai-omatic taste. The leaves of the plant are oblong 

 linear, or lanceolate, revolute at the margin and very hoary when 

 young. 



For pharmaceutical use or as a perfume, lavender flowei-s are stripped 

 from the stalks and dried by a gentle heat. They are but seldom 

 kept in the shops, being grow^n almost entirely for the sake of their 

 essential oil. 



Production of Essential Oil — Lavender is cultivated in the 

 parishes of Mitcham, Carshalton and Beddington and a few adjoining 

 localities, all in Surrey, to the extent of about 300 acres. It is also 

 grown at Market Deeping in Lincolnshire; also at Hitchin in Hertford- 

 shire, where lavender was apparently cultivated as early as the vear 

 1.568.- 



At the latter place there were in 1871 about 50 acres so cropped. 



The plants which are of a small size, and grown in rows in dry 

 open fields, flower in July and August. The flowei-s are usually cut 

 with the stalks of full length, tied up in mats, and carried to the 

 distilleiy there to await distillation. This is performed in the same 

 large stills that are used for pepjjermint. The flow^ers are commonly 

 distilled with the stalks as gathered, and either fresh, or in a more or 

 less dry state. A few cultivatoi-s distill only the flowering heads, there- 

 by obtaining a superior product. Still more rarely, the flowers are 

 stripped from the stalks, and the latter rejected in toto.^ According to 

 the careful experiments of Bell,* the oil made in this last method is of 

 exceedingly fine quality. The produce he obtained in 1846 was 26 i 

 ounces per 100 lb. of flowers, entirely freed from stalks; in 1847, 2ol 

 ounces; and in 1848, 20 ounces: the quantities of flowers used in the 

 respective years were 417, 633, and 923 lb. Oil distilled from the stalks 

 alone was found to have a peculiar rank odour. In the distillation of 



^ Macanlay, Hist, of England, i. ch. 3, account of Holmes, Pharm, Journ. viii. 



Inns. (1877) 301. The author describes also the 



* Perhs, Proc. American Pharm, Associa- disease which is afiFecting the lavender 



tion, 1876. 819. since about the year 1860. 



» For more particulars see the interesting * P/iaim. Journ. viii. (1849) 276. 



