in honour of
Charles XII. It is the largest of all the species drawn in D., and
contrasts strikingly with (4) and (5) in the strict uprightness of its
stem. The corolla is closed at the extremity, which is red; the body of the
flower pale yellow. Grows in marshy and shady woods, near Upsal. Linn.,
Flora Suecica, 553.
The many-lobed but united leaves, at the root five or six inches long, are
irregularly beautiful.
15. These eight species are all I can specify, having no pictures of the
others named by Loudon,--eleven, making nineteen altogether, and I wish I
could find a twentieth and draw them all, but the reader may be well
satisfied if he clearly know these eight. The group they form is an
entirely distinct one, exactly intermediate between the Vestals and
Draconids, and cannot be rightly attached to either; for it is Draconid in
structure and affinity--Vestal in form--and I don't see how to get the
connection of the three families rightly expressed without taking the
Draconidae out of the groups belonging to the dark Kora, and placing them
next the Vestals, with the Monachae between; for indeed Linaria and several
other Draconid forms are entirely innocent and beautiful, and even the
Foxglove never does any real mischief like hemlock, while decoratively it
is one of the most precious of mountain flowers. I find myself also
embarrassed by my name of Vestals, because of the masculine groups of Basil
and Thymus, and I think it will be better to call them simply Menthae, and
to place them with the other cottage-garden plants not yet classed, taking
the easily remembered names Mentha, Monacha, Draconida. This will leave me
a blank seventh place among my twelve orders at p. 194, vol. i., which I
think I shall fill by taking cyclamen and anagillis out of the Primulaceae,
and making a separate group of them. These retouchings and changes are
inevitable in a work confessedly tentative and suggestive only; but in
whatever state of imperfection I may be forced to leave 'Proserpina,' it
will assuredly be found, up to the point reached, a better foundation for
the knowledge of flowers in the minds of young people than any hitherto
adopted system of nomenclature.
16. Taking then this re-arranged group, Mentha, Monacha, and Draconida, as
a sufficiently natural and convenient one, I will briefly give the
essentially botanical relations of the three families.
Mentha and Monacha agree in being essentially hooded flowers, the u
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