1209 



Cf)e CreaSurp of 33fltauu. 



[verb 



transversely ; and the capsule is three- 

 homed. These plants are remarkable for 

 their powerfully acrid properties. The one 

 best known is V. album, called White Helle- 

 bore, "although it has little in common 

 with the true hellebore iHeUeborus) except 

 acridity. The rootstocks of V. album are 

 collected in the Alps and the Pyrenees for 

 medicinal purposes. They are extremely 

 acrid, and in poisonous doses produce in- 

 flammation of the stomach and bowels, 

 and finally insensibility and death. The 

 drug is rarely employed in this country. 

 Its effects seem to be due to the presence 

 of veratria, an acrid alkaline substance 

 (see Asagr^a). Gardeners make use of 

 V. album powdered to destroy caterpillars. 

 V. viride, a North American species, is used 

 for similar purposes, but seems rather less 

 powerful than the European plant. Besides 

 1 those above mentioned, other species are 

 in cultivation, many of them handsome ob- 

 jects when in bloom. Although contain- 

 ing so powerful a poison, slugs and snails 

 seem to be particularly fond of the leaves 

 of these plants. [M. T. M.] 



VERBACHINA. The Mexican name of 

 Phytolacca octandra. 



VERBASCUM. The Mullein genus is 

 distinguished from its congeners in the 

 tribe Verbascew, and indeed from almost 

 the entire order of Serophulariaceee, by 

 having five fertile stamens. Its flowers 

 have a deeply five-cleft or five-parted calyx, 

 a very short-tubed corolla with five broad 

 rounded slightly unequal lobes, stamens 

 with all the filaments woolly or the two 

 lower ones smooth, and a thickish style 

 flattened towards the point. The genus is 

 widely dispersed over Europe, Western 

 and Central Asia, and Northern Africa. 

 An immense number of species have been 

 described, but many of them are, accord- 

 ing to Mr. Bentham, merely varieties, 

 though he himself enumerates no fewer 

 than eighty-three true species and nine 

 doubtful ones. Six are indigenous to Great 

 Britain. They are tall erect strong-growing 

 herbs, usually lasting for two years, ; 

 and are frequently covered all over with | 

 thick wool. Their leaves are alternate 

 coarse and more or less toothed, the 

 root-leaves very large and stalked, while 

 those of the stem become gradually small- 

 er towards the summit, and have no dis- I 

 tinct stalks. The yellow brown purple 

 or rarely white flowers are of short dura- ' t 

 tion, and are succeeded by globular or ! 

 egg-shaped fruits, which split through the I 

 partition into two valves. 



The thick woolly leaves of V. Thapsus, I 

 the Great Mullein, have a mucilaginous ] 

 bitterish taste, and a decoction of them is [ 

 employed in domestic practice in catarrhs 

 and diarrhoea. They are also used as emol- 

 lient applications to hard tumours, and in i 

 pulmonary complaints in cattle— hence one 

 of its popular names is Bullock's Lung- 

 wort. The ancient Greeks are said to have ; 

 used the leaves as lamp-wicks, while the 

 Romans, who called the plant ' candelaria,' 

 dipped it3 stalks in suet to burn at fune- I 



rals. The English name, Hig-taper or High- 

 taper, appears to allude to a similar use. 

 This was a famous plant with the witches 

 of old, whence it has sometimes been 

 called Hag-taper. [A. S.J 



VERBENACE^E. {Yitices, Yerbenes). An 

 order of monopetalous dicotyledons, con- 

 sisting of trees shrubs or herbs, with the 

 leaves (at least the lower ones) usually 

 opposite without stipules, and flowers in 

 terminal 6pikes heads or panicles, or in 

 opposite cymes or clusters. They closely 

 resemble Labiatm in their tubular or campa- 

 nulate calyx, in their corolla being for the 

 most part irregularly five-lobed, in their 

 j stamens being either two or four in pairs, 

 j and in their two or four ovules being en- 

 ' closed in as many cells ; but they differ in 

 ! their ovary, which is not lobed, and has a 

 ! terminal style. They also rarely have the 

 j aromatic properties of Labiatw, the upper 

 leaves are occasionally alternate, the ovules 

 are not always erect, and the fruit rarely 

 separates into distinct seed-like nuts. 

 ! The species are numerous, mostly tropi- 

 cal or from the temperate regions of the 

 i Southern Hemisphere, very few being 

 • found in Europe, Northern Asia, or North 

 America. They are distributed into above 

 forty genera, arranged in three principal 

 tribes :— 1. Verbenece, with a racemose spi- 

 cate or capitate inflorescence and erect 

 ovules; sixteen genera, of which Verbena, 

 Lippia, and Lantana are the most nume- 

 rous in species. To this tribe should also 

 ' be referred Phryma, a curious North 

 American and Asiatic herb which, on ac- 

 count of the convolute cotyledons of its 

 seeds, some botanists separate into an 

 order by itself called Phrymacea?.—2. 

 Yitem, with a cymose inflorescence and 

 laterally-attached ovules ; this comprises 

 twenty genera, amongst which the most 

 important are Tectona, Callicarpa,Cleroden- 

 dron, and Vitex—3. Avicenniece, with pen- 

 dulous ovules, confined usually to the 

 genus Avicennia, but which might well 

 include the Myoporacea, which most bota- 

 nists regard as a distinct order. 



VERBENA. A genus of Vefbenacew, con- 

 sisting of numerous species of herbs or 

 shrubs scattered over the tropical and 

 subtropical regions of the world, being 

 specially abundant in America and rarer in 

 Asia. They have opposite leaves, and ses- 

 sile bracteated flowers, in single or often 

 panicled axillary or terminal spikes. The 

 calyx is tubular and five-toothed, with one 

 of the teeth often shorter than the rest; the 

 corolla also tubular, straight or more gene- 

 rally curved, with a spreading limb, some- 

 what unequally five-cleft ; the stamens in- 

 cluded, the upper pair sometimes without 

 anthers; the style slender, and the stigma 

 capitate. The ripe fruit splits into two or 

 four seed-like nutlets, each containing a 

 single seed. [W. C] 



Various species of this genus and innu- 

 merable varieties are extensively culti- 

 vated for their fragrance and beauty; but 

 the remarkable virtues which the common 

 Verbena was in olden times reputed to 



