The Pepper-Mint 



A low perennial herb with square stems, it has 

 its leaves arranged in pairs, each pair being at right 

 angles to the pair above and below it. Lord Avebury 

 points out that these two characters generally go 

 together, and that it is actually a structural advan- 

 tage for plants with opposite leaves to have their 

 stems square. Soft hairs form a scanty coating on 

 both stalk and le"aves. 



The flowers, which appear in August and Sep- 

 tember, are of a dehcate lilac-blue colour, and are 

 massed, twenty or more together, into balls for the 

 sake of attractiveness. Each flower has a five- 

 toothed calyx and a corolla with four lobes, one a 

 trifle larger than the rest. Now, most of its family 

 relatives have their corollas formed into two hps, 

 hence the family name Ldbiatce, but in the Mints this 

 two-lippedness is reduced almost to nothing, and it 

 could never be distinguished if it were not carefully 

 looked for. Standing on the corolla are four stamens ; 

 they are much taller than it is, and they project 



right beyond it, so the eighty or more stamens that 



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