LII. — THE PELLITORY OF THE WALL. 
Parietaria ramiflora Mcench. 
T HE spreading tufts of this perennial plant, covered, as it is, with short 
curled hairs and often smothered in the dust of old mortar or of the 
neighbouring road, naturally suggest for it a name associateci with those walls 
upon which it is almost invariably seen. It is, in fact, one of those plants 
inhabiting obviously artificial surroundings as to which we may be somewhat 
puzzled to imagine where it would have grown before man appeared upon this 
globe or learnt the art of building a wall. We are not surprised, therefore, to 
learn that its generic name Parietaria , or Wallwort, dates from Pliny, giving rise, 
by a medieval corruption, to Parietorie and Pellitory ; that IV allwort itself occurs 
in the “ Grete Herball ” of 1526; or that the wholly vernacular Lichwort (the 
first half of which is the Celtic llech, a stone, which we probably have in such 
place-names as Leckhampton, the Lickey Hills, and, perhaps, the River Leach, 
running as it does through a region of flag-stones to its confluence with the 
Thames at Lechlade) is mentioned by Gerard. Another name, now assigned to 
an allied genus, is the Greek Helxine (from eX/rw, helko , I drag), because, as Parkinson 
says, it adheres to one’s clothes by the hairiness of its leaves and seeds. The same 
writer states that it was called Perdicium because partridges ate it eagerly, and 
Vitrago or Vitriolaris herba , “ because the roughnesse thereof serveth to dense either 
pots or glasses.” Perhaps, however, this latter name, with its German equivalent 
Glaszkraut and the Dutch Glasseruidt, may refer to some forgotten use in 
glass-manufacture, for the ash of the plant when burnt is stated to be rich in 
potassium-nitrate. Such names as Herba muralis or the Spanish yerva de muro 
clearly refer also to the plant’s general habitat, as, perhaps, less directly, may 
the German Saynt Peters kraut. 
The roots are long, slender, and tough, worming their way deeply into the 
mortar. There is a short woody rhizome, from which arise annual reddish, 
quadrangular stems, variously branched, tufted, erect or prostrate in direction. 
These are clothed throughout with numerous scattered, slenderly-stalked leaves, 
elliptic-lanceolate in outline, exstipulate, entire, more or less acute, with three 
chief longitudinal veins, and ranging from half an inch to three or four inches 
in length. 
The Parietaria officinalis of Linnaeus has been subdivided, the modern species 
being named from the direction of growth of their branches, P. erecta M. & K., which 
is apparently not British, and P. diffusa M. & K., now known by the earlier name 
P. ramiflora of Moench, which is. In addition to the direction of their branches 
and some minor differences of leaf-form, these two species are mainly to be 
discriminated by the bracts, which in P. erecta are free, but in P. ramiflora are 
united at their bases into an involucre still clearly formed of two three-lobed 
