FIGWORT FAMILY 



A well-known and beautiful outcast from the garden. Doubt- 

 less it would have come to us at any rate, but the story goes that 

 Mr. Ramstead, living in the suburbs of Philadelphia, introduced 

 the plant into his garden. No one would have objected had it 

 stayed there, but that it would not do; it crawled 

 under the fence and visited his neighbors who 

 were market gardeners, and the outcome of the 

 visits was that the plant received the name 

 of Ramstead Weed. It is better known as 

 Toad-flax and Butter-and-Eggs. 



A little plantation of Toad-flax is easily rec- 

 ognized; one sees it as a patch of gray-green 

 by the roadside, which resolves itself into a 

 body of erect stems thickly beset with linear 

 leaves. At the summit of each flowering stem 

 is a spike of beautiful orange and yellow, 

 spurred and two-lipped flowers. The flower 

 flame creeps up the stem slowly so that the 

 blooming period is long extended. 



The blossoms appear in two forms: one, the 

 common two-lipped variety, and the other not 

 so common, in which the corolla has five spurs, 

 is regularly five-lobed, and is then said to be 

 in the peloria state. By peloria state is meant 

 the condition in which a plant, that normally 

 produces irregular flowers, produces regular ones. The earliest 

 recorded observation of such a condition was made by Linnaeus 

 and upon our wandering Toad-flax. Sometimes there are a few 

 such in a flowering spike; sometimes an entire stem bears only 

 regular five-spurred blossoms. 



Toad-flax. Linaria 

 vulgaris 



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