HEDGE MUSTARD— continued. 
grows from one to two feet in height and is often remarkably erect, terete, and bearing 
many stiffly horizontal branches. It bears leaves, except on its uppermost part, and 
is generally rough with fine, reflexed, bristly hairs. The leaves are lyrately and 
runcinately pinnatifid, being deeply divided into from five to seven lobes, of which 
the terminal one is larger and hastate, whilst the lateral ones are oblong, and 
unequally toothed, and point towards the base of the leaf. The minute, pale yellow 
flowers are not more than a tenth of an inch across ; and it is presumably the little 
corymbose clusters often at the apex of a long slender stem which has gained 
for the plant the name of Lucifer Matches^ which is stated in Messrs. Britten 
and Holland’s excellent “ Dictionary of English Plant-Names ” to be in use in 
Worcestershire. 
The late Lord Avebury wrote of these flowers : — 
“There is a honey-gland on each side of the two short stamens. When the flower opens, the pistil and the longer stamens 
project slightly. The shorter stamens are enclosed in the flower, but the anthers are open. All six stamens then grow a 
little so that the anthers of the shorter ones reach the stigma, while those of the longer ones project slightly beyond it. The 
flower is therefore adapted for cross-fertilisation, but may also be fertilised by its own pollen. It is visited by bees, flies, and 
butterflies,” 
As is often the case in this Family, the corymbose cluster of flowers — an 
adaptation for conspicuousness and probably, therefore, for insect-pollination — rapidly 
elongates, as the lower flowers are fertilised, into a long racemose cluster of fruits — 
an adaptation apparently for more effective seed-dispersal. The pods in this species 
are rather more than half an inch long, on very short thick stalks : they are erect and 
are pressed close to the main stalk ; and they each taper from the base into the style. 
Though usually covered with fine down, there is a variety in which the pods are 
glabrous. There are about twelve seeds in each pod. Gerard, whose “ Herball ” 
(1597) contains the first record we have of this species, calls it Banck Cresses, and 
truly remarks that it grows “in stony places among rubbish by pathwaies.” 
The plant acquired the name officinale from the reputed efficacy of its juice, or of 
an infusion either of the whole plant or of its seeds, in cases of asthma, hoarseness, or 
ulcerated sore-throat ; and for the same reason it is still known in France as Herbe au 
Chantre, the singer’s herb. 
Some of the earlier botanists, struck it would seem by the resemblance of Its 
stiff branching to that of the Vervain, called it Verbena ; but whilst Tragus calls it 
Verbena fcemina, Fuchs calls it Verbena mas. 
The name Hedge Mustard seems to have been first used, in 1713, by James 
Petiver [jl. 1658-1718), Sir Hans Sloane’s apothecary and the friend of John Ray, 
in his illustrated catalogue of Ray’s herbarium. 
