OUR LOCAL FLORA ', ITS ECONOMIC ASPECT. 151 
We have now noticed honey, our woodland trees, our wild hop, 
and wild representatives of green crops, clovers, trefoils, vetches, 
and pasture. Of wild plants, comprised in the existing Materia 
Medico, we have Aconitum Napellus, Monkshood, very rare; 
Atropa belladonna, Deadly Nightshade, also very rare, furnishing 
liniments, tinctures, and alkaloids. Hyoscyamus niger, common 
Henbane, less rare, and from which an extract and a tincture are 
obtained, is also very poisonous. From Conium maculatum, 
Hemlock, which is common in the Plymouth Flora, is prepared an 
extract with active narcotic properties. It is also highly poisonous, 
and when growing best known by its spotted stem. Another local 
medicinal and poisonous plant, so abundant and conspicuous that 
every child knows it, is the purple Foxglove — Digitalis purpurea. 
The following are other local plants named in the British 
Pharmacopoeia, some of which are also food plants : root of great 
wild Valerian, Valeriana officinalis, common; root of common 
Dandelion, Taraxacum officinale, very common, as everybody 
knows ; flowers of common Camomile, Anthemis nobilis ; common 
Peppermint, Mentha piperata, rare ; Spearmint, Mentha viridis, 
very rare ; common Caraway, Carum carin, rare ; flowers of common 
Elder, Sambucus nigra, very common ; linseed and linseed oil from 
seeds of the common Flax, Linum usitatissimum, common. 
An observation of Mr. Briggs relative to this last plant is 
useful here. He says, " The occurrence of this seems entirely due 
either to its seeds being unintentionally sown with corn or other 
crops, or else to the economic uses of the seeds themselves as 
1 linseed,' causing them to become scattered about houses and by 
waysides, where they rapidly vegetate. I have never seen ' flax ' 
as a crop anywhere in Plymouth." 
Petals of the Red Poppy, Papaver rhaeas, a plant we have in 
abundance, yield a medicinal preparation. The opium of commerce 
is obtained from capsules of the White Poppy, Papava somniferum, 
absent from our Flora, and which, owing to the growing cheapness 
of the imported commodity, is getting out of cultivation in 
Britain. Its growth in China and Persia is increasing rapidly, a 
single poppy plant producing 32,000 seeds. 
Our sweet herbs almost all belong to the Labiatae order. 
Salvia Verbenaca, wild English Clary or Sage, is confined, Mr. 
Briggs says, to the warmest portions of the area. " The seeds of 
this plant produce a great quantity of mucilage when moistened 
