TEUCRIUM MARUM, 
209 
,1640, and is now to be met with in many of our greenhouses. It is 
a perennial plant, flowering from July to September. The root is 
long, woody, and divides into many fibrous branches. In our gar- 
dens it rises about a foot in height, but in its native clime it rises to 
the height of three or four feet ; the stalks are numerous, slender, 
woolly and branched ; the leaves are ovate, pointed, entire, opposite, 
above of a bright green, beneath hoary, and stand upon slender 
footstalks ; tlie leaves towards the lower part of the stems are often 
nearly three-lobed, and the petioles are longer than those on the 
upper part and branches; the flowers are produced in loose ter- 
minal spikes, and stand on the same side in pairs, on short peduncles ; 
the corolla is of a pale red or purple colour, and consists of a short, 
curved, cylindrical tube, which divides at the Hmb into two lips, the 
upper of which is short, erect, and divided to the base ; the calyx 
is tubular, whitish, woolly, and divided into five short pointed seg- 
ments ; the filaments are two long and two short, all of which are 
slender, white, and support simple anthers ; the germen is quadrifid, 
and supports a slender style, with a bifid stigma ; the seeds are four, 
of a brown colour, and lodged within the calyx. This plant is 
supposed to be the M^itpov of Dioscorides ; it is said that cats are 
remarkably fond of it ; hence it has been long known by the name 
of cat thyme.* 
Sensible Qualities, &c. The leaves and younger branches of 
Marum when recent, on being rubbed between the fingers, emit a vola- 
tile aromatic smell, which readily excites sneezing. Their taste is 
acrid, bitter, and pungent, and on being chewed fill the mouth with a 
durable glowing warmth. These qualities depend upon a volatile 
oil which may be obtained by distillation with water ; by drying, 
this plant loses very little of its pungency ; it gives out its virtues 
both to water and spirit, but most perfectly to the latter. The 
essential oil is highly pungent. 
Medical Properties and Uses. The leaves of Marum 
were formerly supposed to possess very active powers as a stimulant 
aromatic, deobslruent, and diuretic, and instances of its good effects 
in a variety of diseases, viz. apoplexy, asthma, and other disorders 
©f the lungs, suppression of the menses, debility of the nervous 
system, &c. are recorded by Linnaeus, Wedelius, Rosenstein, and 
others. In modern practice (at least in this country,) it is seldom 
employed but as an errhiue, for which purpose it was highly extolled 
* See Jac. Antonii Cortasi Catalogus Horti Patavini, anno 1591. 
