CLXXX.— THE GREAT WILLOW-HERB. 
Epilobium hirsutum Linne. 
T HE other British species of Epilobium have opposite leaves at least on the lower 
part of their stems, though the upper ones are often scattered. Their flowers 
are polysymmetric : there is a “calyx-tube ” extending above the inferior ovary, and 
their stamens and style are erect. They differ much in size : in their stems, which 
may be round or more or less tetragonal in section, in the size and depth of tint in 
their flowers, and in their stigmas, which may be four-cleft or entire ; but are often 
extremely difficult to discriminate. They vary considerably in many of their 
characters ; and where two species grow near to one another they frequently 
hybridise. Small-flowered forms, especially if pale in colour, are generally homo- 
gamous, are seldom visited by insects, and set seed freely as a result of self- 
pollination ; but these are characters in which the individuals even of a single 
species often differ, more especially in different localities. 
Epilobium hirsutum Linne is a tall handsome plant, from three to six feet high. 
It produces thick, fleshy underground suckers, bearing a few leaf-scales or rosettes of 
leaves, and the sub-aerial stems are slightly branched, terete, and downy. The hairs 
from which the species gets its appropriate name hirsutum are of two kinds, some 
long and spreading and others glandular, rendering the plant somewhat viscid and, 
perhaps, producing the perfume which is most noticeable when the leaves or young 
shoots are bruised. The leaves are from three to five inches long, oblong-lanceolate, 
clasping the stem and decurrent down it in narrow wings, finely toothed, and most 
hairy along their veins. The abruptly pointed flower-buds stand erect and expand 
in July or August into handsome, deep rose-pink blossoms which vary in diameter 
from a quarter of an inch to upwards of an inch, varying also in the period of 
maturity of their essential organs. The sepals are lanceolate and the petals broad 
and notched : the filaments are hairy at their bases, and the four large white stig- 
matic lobes, which are revolute, form a conspicuous feature in the flower. Flowers 
exclusively female, in which the anthers produce no pollen, occasionally occur ; and 
three different forms of perfect flowers have been described, viz. small homogamous 
ones that are self-pollinating ; medium-sized flowers which are homogamous or 
slightly protandrous, with an erect pistil, in which case self-pollination is at least 
possible ; and large, markedly protandrous blossoms with a long style hanging out 
of the flower, so that self-pollination is precluded. The capsules are from two 
to three inches in length. Henry Lyte, in his translation of Dodoens’s Herbal, 
referring to the stout inferior ovary, says that this species 
<4 is called of some, in Latine, Filius ante Patrcm y that is to say, the sonne before the father, bycause yt has long huskes in 
which the seede is conteined do come forth, and waxe great, before that the floure openeth.” 
Most of our English popular names for this species refer, however, to the 
perfume which exhales from the blossoms, especially in warm sunny weather, as well 
