SCROPHULARIACEAE (FIGWORT FAMILY) 377 
ing lips three or four inches across; calyx tubular, five-lobed, 
smooth, and glandular-hairy. “Apple” globular, about an inch 
and a half in diameter, both hairy and prickly. This plant is quite 
as poisonous as the two preceding species and should be as promptly 
suppressed when out of the bounds of cultivation. 
MULLEIN 
Verbéscum Thdépsus, L. 
Other English names: Velvet Dock, Feltwort, Blanket-leaf, Hedge 
Taper, Candle-wick, Jacob’s Staff. 
Introduced. Biennial. Propagates by seeds. 
Time of bloom: June to September. 
Seed-time: August to November. 
Range: Nova Scotia to Minnesota, southward to Florida and 
Kansas. 
Habitat: Old fields, pastures, and waste places. 
Gray states that the generic name of this 
plant is corrupted from Barbascum, “the 
bearded’’— certainly most fitting for a plant 
so densely hairy in all its parts. (Fig. 262.) 
Stem two to seven feet tall, stout, erect, 
simple or with one or two upright branches 
near the top. Root-leaves tufted, spreading 
on the ground in a large, thick rosette; ob- 
long, light green, thick, densely woolly with 
branched and interlacing hairs, tapering to 
the base, four inches to a foot or more in 
length, the larger ones with petioles. No 
grazing animal will touch these felt-like 
leaves, and hibernating insects find them a 
safe winter shelter. Upper leaves narrower 
and more pointed, alternate, their bases often 
decurrent on the stem to the axils of the 
leaf below, making the stem four-winged. 
Flowers sessile on long, dense, cylindrical 
spikes; calyx with five pointed lobes, very 
woolly; corolla yellow, with five unequal, Ga eo 
rounded lobes, spread flat, open for but a Thapsus). x }. 
