Wild Flowers as They Grow 



protrude from each tuft of flowers form a sort of 

 halo to the blue ball. Every flower produces four 

 seeds — ^each in a little pocket of the ovary — ^with a 

 column rising from down between them and passing 

 up through the stamens and ending in a fork. As 

 they mature the petals turn brown, lingering on 

 long after they are dead ; the calyx, too, dries and 

 persists protectingly until the four nutlets are black 

 and ripe and are scattered to the winds. Our 

 photograph is an excellent presentment of the 

 plant. 



The Pepper-Mint appears to have been first 

 definitely recognised as wild in Hertfordshire, and to 

 have received its name from Ray in his Historia 

 Plantarum, pubhshed 1704. It is one of the few 

 plants whose reputation in medicine is of compara- 

 tively recent origin. Culpepper does not mention 

 it among the medicinal herbs of his day, though he 

 records a common beUef that if a woimded man eat 

 ordinary mint his woimd would never be cured — and 



he sapiently opines, " and that is a long day ! " Its 



164 



