LAVANDULA SPICA.-LA VENDER, OR SPIKE LAVENDER. 
Class XIV. DIDYNAMIA. — Order I. GYMNOSPERMIA. 
Natural Order, LABIATE.— THE MINT TRIBE. 
Lavender is a dwarf, odoriferous shrub, a native of the south of Europe, and appears to have been culti- 
vated in England previously to the year 1568 ; it flowers from June to September. 
The plant is shrubby, much branched, and rises from two to four feet high ; the bark of the younger 
shoots being of a pale green colour, while that of the stem is rough and brown. The leaves are numerous, 
linear, hoary, entire, slightly rolled back at the edges ; the upper ones sessile, tbe lower petioled. The 
flowers form terminating spike-like thyrsi which consist of interrupted whorl-like cymes, in which the 
flowers are from six to ten, and are furnished with small ovate bracteas. The corolla is of a blue colour, and 
consists of a longish cylindrical tube, divided at the mouth into two Ups, the uppermost of which is larger 
and bifid, the lower expanded downwards, and divided into three segments. The filaments are four, inclosed 
within the tubular part of the corolla, and support small simple anthers ; the style is slender, and crowned 
wilh a bilobed stigma, and rises from the depressed centre of a tetrakenium at the base of the tube. 
There are three varieties of Lavender, namely, L. angustifolia jlore albo ; L. latifolia ; and the L. Spica, 
tUg subject of this article, which is largely cultivated in the vicinity of London ; at Mitcham, in Surrey ; 
Henley-on-Thames, and many other places. 
The Lavenders are much prized for the very grateful odour of their essential oils. The flowers and 
leaves of these plants have long been used as perfumes ; and the ancients employed them to, aromatize their 
baths, and to give a sweet scent to water in which they washed, hence indeed their generic name, Lavandula. 
The oil of Lavandula Spica is more pleasant than that of the other species, and is distinguished in commerce 
by the name of oil of Spike, while the others are called oils of Lavender. Sixty ounces of flowers yield 
only one ounce of oil, hence its high price, and the continual adulterations of the genuine drug, with oil of 
turpentine. According to Proust, it contains a fourth of its weight or more of Camphor. Lavender is a 
grateful and powerful stimulant, and it enters into the composition of several carminative medicines ; but its 
chief consumption is as a perfume. It is also one of the ingredients used in the preparations of Eau de 
Cologne, and of the once famous Vinaigre des quatre voleurs. 
Powdered Lavender leaves were once used as a cephalic snuff, and large quantities of the plant in flower 
are annually brought into London, where it is used by the citizens to perfume their wardrobes, and to pre- 
vent the moths from fretting their garments. 
The distilled oil is particularly celebrated for destroying several kinds of cutaneous insects : if soft 
spongy paper, dipt in this oil, either alone, or mixed with that of almonds, be applied at night to the 
parts infested by insects, they will certainly, says Geoffroy, be all found dead in the morning. 
Qualities. — The flowers of Lavender possess an agreeable fragrant odour, and a pungent bitter taste. 
Alcohol extracts their virtues completely, and elevates in distillation all their odorous parts ; water acts 
less completely. 
The oil, however, on which their virtues depend, is obtained separate in distillation with water ; in the 
proportion, according to Lewis, of one ounce of oil from sixty ounces of flowers. 
Lavender is thought of some, says Gerard to bee that sweet herbe Casia, whereof Virgil maketh men- 
tion in the second Eclog of his Bucolicks : — 
And then shee’l spike and such sweet hearbs infold, 
And paint the lacinth with the Marigold. 
