205 



N. Ord. LABIATJE. 

 Tribe Satureiete. 



Genus Thymus,* Linn. B. & H., Gen., ii, p. 1186. Species 

 variously estimated at 50 to 80, nearly all inhabitants of 

 the Mediterranean region. 



205. Thymus vulgaris, Linn., Sp. Plant., ed. 1, p. 591 (1753)i 

 Garden Thyme. Thyme. 



Figures. Woodville, t. 125 ; Nees, 1. 182 ; Hayne, xi, t. 2 ; Berg & Sch., 

 t. 18 e. 



Description. A small, mucli-branclied shrub, scarcely a foot 

 high, the branches ascending, opposite, slender, very bluntly 

 quadrangular, with a pale brown bark, the young shoots purplish- 

 red, pubescent with very short stiff white hairs. Leaves 

 opposite, sessile, \ | inch long, oval or oval-lanceolate, blunt, 

 eutire with the margin revolute, thick, smooth, dotted with 

 numerous oil-glands, paler beneath. Flowers polygamous, 

 numerous, on slender stalks arranged in small shortly stalked 

 cymes in the axils of the uppermost leaves and forming ter- 

 minal rounded capitate heads, often with a few whorls below. 

 Calyx bilabiate, hairy externally, dotted with glands, the upper 

 lip flat of three very short triangular teeth, the lower of two 

 stiff curved subulate teeth about as long as the tube, which has a 

 ring of dense white hair at its mouth within. Corolla small, 

 the tube not much exceeding the calyx, cylindrical, smooth 

 within, the limb nearly flat, spreading, the upper lip emarginate, 

 the lower with 3 blunt rounded lobes, faintly veined. Stamens 4 

 inserted in the tube of the corolla, with very short equal filaments 

 and small rounded anthers in the female flowers, in the bisexual 

 flowers with long exserted filaments and the two lateral much the 

 longest ; anthers kidney- shaped with a wide connective, violet- 

 coloured. Style exserted, longer in the female than in the bisexual 



* Thymus, BV^OQ, the classical name. 



