Localities.— In diy pastures, about hedges, and by road-sides, on a graveU 
or chalky soil ; not uncommon. 
Perennial. — Flowers in August. 
Root fibrous. Stems several, ascending, from 1 to 2 feet high, 
somewhat wavy, 4-angled, clothed all over, as is every other part 
of the plant, with long spreading hairs. Leaves opposite, on short- 
ish petioles, egg-shaped, bluntish, about an inch long, with a few 
shallow serratures ; very regularly and distinctly veined, the ribs on 
the under surface rather prominent, and clothed with copious 
bristly hairs. Whorls few, equal, globose, of many, usually more 
than forty, light' purple, not unhandsome flowers, on forked, or 
branched, hairy pedicels, accompanied by narrow, awl-shaped, 
hairy bracteas (see fig. 1.) ; one of the whorls always terminating 
the stems and branches. Calyx 13-nerved, very hairy, 2-lipped, 
the lower lip of 2 teeth. Corolla prominent, twice as long as the 
calyx, of a purplish-red colour, with a yellow hairy protuberance 
at each side of its mouth ; the middle lobe of the lower lip very 
broad, and notched. 
The smell of the plant is somewhat aromatic, and not unpleasant. 
It is of no particular use. Goats and sheep will eat it ; horses re- 
fuse it. 
This species is said to be native throughout Europe and Middle Asia, in 
woods, hedges, and waysides ; from Scotland and Sweden to Spain, Sicily, 
Greece, and Caucasus ; and North America; but probably introduced from 
Europe to the latter country. 
“ Go forth,” says an elegant writer in The Amulet, for 1832, p. 154, — 
“ Go forth into the fields and among the green hedges ; walk abroad into the 
meadows, and ramble over heaths; climb the steep mountains, and dive into 
the deep valleys; scramble among the bristly thickets, or totter among the 
perpendicular precipices; and what will you find there? Flowers — flowers — 
flowers! What can they want there? What can they do there ? How did they 
get there ? What are they but the manifestation that the Creator of the 
Universe is a more glorious and benevolent Being than political economists, 
utilitarians, philosophers, and id genus omne 1 
" Flowers — of all things created most innocently simple and most superbly 
complex ; playthings for childhood, ornaments of the grave, and companions 
of the cold corpse in the coffin ! Flowers — beloved by the wandering idiot, 
and studied by the deep-thinking man of science ! Flowers — that of perishing 
things are most perishing, yet of all earthly things are the most heavenly ! 
Flowers — that, in the simplicity of their frailty, seem to beg leave to be, and 
that occupy, with blushing modesty, the clefts, and corners, and spare nooks 
of earth, shrinking from the many-trodden path, and not encroaching on the 
walks of man ; retiring from the multitudinous city, and only then, when man 
has deserted the habitation he has raised, silently, and as if long waiting for 
implied permission, creeping over the grey wall and making ruin beautiful ! 
Flowers — that unceasingly expand to heaven their grateful, and to man, their 
cheerful looks : partners of human joy, soothers of human sorrow ; fit emblems 
of the victor’s triumphs, of the young bride’s blushes ; welcome to crowded 
halls and graceful upon solitary graves! Flowers — that, by the unchange- 
ableness of their beauty, bring back the past with delightful and living inten- 
sity of recollection! Flowers — over which innocence sheds the tear of ioy; 
and penitence heaves the sigh of regret, thinking of the innocence that has 
been ! Flowers are for the young and for the old ; for the grave and for the 
gay ; for the living and for the dead ; for all but the guilty, and for them when 
they are penitent. Flowers are, in the volume of nature, what the expression, 
* God is love,’ is in the volume of revelation. They tell man of the paternal 
character of the Deity.” 
