340 TlMEHRI. 



the handsome sea-holly whose blue flowers and 

 prickly glaucous leaves are a characteristic feature of 

 our sandy shores at home. 



The larger umbels, such as cow-parsnip and wild 

 angelica, are great favourites with artists at home for 

 foreground effects, often mingled for contrast with the 

 broad leaves of the butter-bur or some similar plant. 

 Our local artists might replace them by some com- 

 mon weeds, not beautiful in themselves, but picturesque 

 and effective in composition. Instead of the umbels 

 might be put the tall spikes of the man-piabba, 

 or giant woundwort (Leonurus nepetxfolia), con- 

 spicuous for the large spiny ball-shaped flower-heads, 

 with tubular orange flowers, arranged at intervals 

 round the square central stem. A slenderer kind, really 

 belonging to a different genus, is called the woman-piabba 

 CHyptis capitata) which has round flower-heads the size 

 of an ordinary marble growing on short stalks in pairs up 

 the stems. The flowers are white and inconspicuous. 

 It is also known as wild hops, and large specimens of it, 

 four or five feet high, are sometimes improperly called 

 man-piabba. The name woman-piabba is then given to 

 the white spikenard (Hyptis petflinataj , a still slenderer 

 plant, common everywhere in waste land, in which the 

 small whitish flowers, almost hidden by the calyx, are 

 clustered towards the end of the erecl stems, not gath- 

 ered into round heads. The true West Indian spikenard 

 (Hyptis suaveolensj, does not occur here wild; but a 

 very aromatic species (Qcimum tnicranthum) with spikes 

 of little flowers in which the toothed calyx is more con T 

 spicuous than the corolla, is found sparsely by roadsides, 

 and is called wild balsy — a corruption of basil, not bal- 



