Of course, special healing virtue was attributed to the square of pictured linen, and since all could not go to Rome to be cured by it, naturally the next step was to employ the common, wayside plant that bore the saint's name.Mental healers will not be surprised to learn that because of the strong popular belief in its efficacy to cure all fleshly ills, it actually seemed to possess miraculous powers.For scrofula it was said to be the infallible remedy, and presently we find Linnaeus grouping this flower, and all its relatives under the family name of Scrofulariaceae."What's in a name?" Religion, theology, medicine, folk-lore, metaphysics, what not?
One of the most common wild flowers in England is this same familiar little blossom of that lovely shade of blue known by Chinese artists as "the sky after rain." "The prettiest of all humble roadside flowers I saw," says Burroughs, in "A Glance at British Wild Flowers." "It is prettier than the violet, and larger and deeper colored than our houstonia.It is a small and delicate edition of our hepatica, done in indigo blue, and wonted to the grass in the fields and by the waysides.
'The little speedwell's darling blue'
sings Tennyson.I saw it blooming with the daisy and buttercup upon the grave of Carlyle.The tender human and poetic element of his stern, rocky nature was well expressed by it."Only as it grows in masses is the speedwell conspicuous - a sufficient reason for its habit of forming colonies and of gathering its insignificant blossoms together into dense spikes, since by these methods it issues a flaunting advertisement of its nectar.The flower that simplifies dining for insects has its certain reward in rapidly increased and vigorous descendants.To save repetition, the reader interested in the process of fertilization is referred to the account of the Maryland figwort, since many members of the large family to which both belong employ the same method of economizing pollen and insuring fertile seed.In this case visitors have only to crawl over the tiny blossoms.
>From Labrador to Alaska, throughout almost every section of the United States, in South America, Europe, and Asia, roams the THYME-LEAVED SPEEDWELL (V.serpyllifolia), by the help of its numerous flat seeds, that are easily transported on the wind, and by its branching stem, that lies partly on the ground, rooting where the joints touch earth.The small oval leaves, barely half an inch long, grow in pairs.The tiny blue, or sometimes white, flowers, with dark pathfinders to the nectary, are borne on spike-like racemes at the ends of the stem and branches that rear themselves upward in fields and thickets to display their bloom before the passing bee.
PALE, or NAKED, or ONE-FLOWERED BROOM-RAPE(Thalesia uniflora; Aphyllon uniflorum of Gray) Broom-rape family Flowers - Violet, rarely white, delicately fragrant, solitary at end of erect, glandular peduncles.Calyx hairy, bell-shaped, 5-toothed, not half the length of corolla, which is 1 in.or less long, with curved tube spreading into 2 lips, 5-lobed, yellow-bearded within; 4 stamens, in pairs, inserted on tube of corolla ; 1 pistil.Stem: About 1 in.long, scaly, often entirely underground; the 1 to 4 brownish scape-like peduncles, on which flowers are borne, from 3 to 8 in.high.Leaves: None.Fruit: An elongated, egg-shaped, 1-celled capsule containing numerous seeds.
Preferred Habitat - Damp woods and thickets.
Flowering Season - April-June.
Distribution - British Possessions and United States from coast to coast, southward to Virginia, and Texas.
A curious, beautiful parasite, fastened on the roots of honest plants from which it draws its nourishment.The ancestors of this species, having deserted the path of rectitude ages ago to live by piracy, gradually lost the use of their leaves, upon which virtuous plants depend as upon a part of their digestive apparatus; they grew smaller and smaller, shriveled and dried, until now that the one-flowered broom-rape sucks its food, rendered already digestible through another's assimilation, no leaves remain on its brownish scapes.Disuse of any talent in the vegetable kingdom, as in the spiritual, leads to inevitable loss:
"Unto every one which hath shall be given; and from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away."HAIRY RUELLIA
(Ruellia ciliosa) Acanthus family Flowers - Pale violet blue, showy, about 2 in.long, solitary or clustered in the axils or at the end of stem.Calyx of 5bristle-shaped hairy segments; corolla with very slender tube expanding above in 5 nearly equal obtuse lobes; stamens 4; pistil with recurved style.Stem: Hairy, especially above, erect, 1 to 21/2 ft.high.Leaves: Opposite, oblong, narrowed at apex, entire, covered with soft white hairs.
Preferred Habitat - Dry soil.
Flowering Season - June-September.
Distribution - New Jersey southward to the Gulf and westward to Michigan and Nebraska.
Many charming ruellias from the tropics adorn hothouses and window gardens in winter; but so far north as the New Jersey pine barrens, and westward where killing frosts occur, this perennial proves to be perfectly hardy.In addition to its showy blossoms, which so successfully invite insects to transfer their pollen, thereby counteracting the bad effects of close inbreeding, the plant bears inconspicuous cleistogamous or blind ones also.These look like arrested buds that never open; but, being fertilized with their own pollen, ripen abundant seed nevertheless.