SQUARE-STEMMED ST. JOHN’S-WORT— continued. 
With the coming of Christianity the old pagan rites of the summer solstice took 
their names from the feast of St. John the Baptist, and Hypericum became St. John’s- 
wort, the German Johanniskraut, the Dutch St. Jan’s kruid, the Danish St. Hans urt, 
and the Bohemian St. Jana bylina. The old symbolic magic degenerated into mere 
love-sick maiden’s divination ; and in Saxony every young girl plucked a sprig 
of St. John’s-wort on the Eve of St. John by the light of the glow-worm or 
“ Johanniswilrmchen,” and stuck it into the wall of her bedroom. If the wall 
was damp enough to keep the sprig fresh she would be married within the year ; 
but if it drooped, she too would pine away. 
Wishing to discriminate between the different species of what we now recognise 
as the genus Hypericum, sixteenth-century botanists coined the name St. Peter’s-wort, 
which they applied to the Square-stemmed species (H. quadrangulum Linne) and some 
others, appropriately enough, since June 29th, St. Peter’s Day, is a fair average date 
for the flowering of these species. 
In the Section of the genus to which alone the name Hypericum is restricted by 
some continental botanists, the petals are persistent, the stamens are in three bundles, 
with no intervening glands, and the ovary is completely divided into three chambers, 
the edges of the carpels uniting so that the placentation becomes central. The 
different species are very varied in their ecology, inhabiting limestone or gravel, 
sandy heaths or wet ditches, and the Square-stemmed H. quadrangulum Linne is chiefly 
to be found in the last-mentioned habitat. The four green wings or flanges to its 
stiff, erect, and tough stems are very characteristic, and its ovate leaves have 
translucent veins as well as the glands so frequent in the genus. It is to these 
translucent glands that the genus owes its French name Millepertuis, and the 
Portuguese Milfurada ; and it was, perhaps, partly a fanciful view of them as wounds 
that gave the name quoted by Sir William Hooker as Balm oj the warrior’s wound. In 
Guernsey the name is Herbe a mille pertus. 
The cymose inflorescence in H. quadrangulum has its branches close together : 
its flowers are somewhat pale : the sepals are erect, lanceolate-acuminate, and entire, 
and may have black glands, but not at their margins, as also have the petals. The 
ovary has numerous oil-sacs or vittce. 
It is clearly of this species that Turner writes in his “Names of Herbes ” 
(1548) 
“Ascyron is not very common in England, howe be it I sawe it thys last yere in Syon parck, it hath a foursquared stalke, 
and is like saynte Johans grasse, but it is greater and not wyth suche holes as are in saynte Johans grasse, wherefore it 
maye be called in english square saynt Johans grasse or great saynt Johans grasse.” 
