ADDISONIA 35 
(Plate 18) 
VITEX AGNUS-CASTUS 
Chaste Tree 
Native of the Mediterranean Region and the Orient 
Family VERBENACEAE VERVAIN Family 
Vitex Agnus-castus I,. Sp. Pl. 638. 1753. 
A freely branching shrub, rarely a small tree, four to six feet tall 
in cultivation, with palmately divided leaves and lavender flowers 
in spike-like clusters. The stems are densely pubescent with short 
ch 
surface grayish with a velvety pubescence; the petioles are one to 
two inches long. ‘The leaf-blades are divided into five or seven 
lanceolate segments with entire margins, the central segment the 
largest, up to three or four inches long or more and about one half 
inch wide, the others decreasing in size, the smallest ones often less 
than an inch long. They are gradually narrowed above into a 
sharp point and are acute at the base, on short stalks a quarter of an 
inch long or less. ‘The flower-clusters are long and narrow, up to 
shaped, less than one twelfth of an inch long, gray-green, finely 
pubescent, with five minute teeth. The corolla is about one third 
of an inch long, lavender, grayish-tomentose outside, the tube 
gradually broadened above into a spreading five-lobed limb, the 
lobes obtuse or acutish. The stamens and style are exserted from 
the corolla-tube. The fruit is nearly globular, about an eighth of an 
inch in diameter. 
One of the best of our summer shrubs, bearing in terminal and 
axillary clusters a profusion of lavender flowers. It is at its prime 
in the months of August and September, the bronze-purple color- 
ation of the foliage which appears in the latter month adding to its 
beauty. During severe winters it is not quite hardy in the latitude 
of New York City, the branches sometimes being killed, or the whole 
shrub destroyed to the ground. It soon recovers, however; the 
plant from which the accompanying illustration was made has been 
in the collections of the New York Botanical Garden since 1907. It 
will grow in almost any kind of soil, but prefers situations dry and 
sunny. It may be propagated by seeds sown in the spring, by 
green-wood cuttings under glass, and by layers. 
A number of common names are applied to this plant. In addi- 
tion to the one above it is also known as Abraham’s balm, hemp 
