Medical Properties of Flowers 



in stem, leaves, flower, or seed, and sometimes in 

 all, and not one species which can in any way 

 be called hurtful to man or beast. It is in this 

 family that we find mint, thyme, lavender, mar- 

 joram, peppermint, basil, sage, balm, and a host 

 of other similar plants, many of them also among 

 our most beautiful garden flowers. 



I have taken three families in which the 

 harmful and wholesome properties are distinctly 

 marked ; I will shortly take one in which they 

 are combined and yet are curiously separate, and 

 are also distinctly marked. There is no need 

 to dwell on the distinctive marks of the rosaceae ; 

 they (almost universally) have regular flowers of 

 five petals, the leaves with stipules, many stamens, 

 and in the great families of the roses {roseae), the 

 apples {pomeae), and the plums {pruneae), of 

 which only I will speak, with the seed-vessel, or 

 fruit beneath the calyx (ovary inferior). To this 

 large family we are indebted for our, best and 

 most wholesome fruits — pears, apples, strawberries, 

 peaches, apricots, nectarines, plums, raspberries, 

 blackberries, cherries all belong to this family ; 

 and there is nothing unwholesome to man or 

 beast, with some curious and well-marked excep- 

 tions. Where the fruit is a fleshy pome, as in 

 apples or pears, or in many combined drupes, as 

 in raspberries and blackberries, the plant is alto- 

 gether wholesome and good. But when, as in 

 another branch of the family, the pruneae, the 

 fruit is in single drupes, with the seed or kernel 

 125 



