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 upper
petal more or less taking the form of a cup, helmet or hood, which conceals
the tops of the stamens. Of the three lower petals, the lowest is almost
invariably the longest; it sometimes is itself divided again into two, but
may be best thought of as single, and with the two lateral ones,
distinguished in the Menthae as the apron and the side pockets.
Plate XII. represents the most characteristic types of the blossoms of
Menthae, in the profile and front views, all a little magnified. The upper
two are white basil, purple spotted--growing here at Brantwood always with
two terminal flowers. The two middle figures are the purple-spotted dead
nettle, Lamium maculatum; and the two lower, thyme: but I have not been
able to draw these as I wanted, the perspectives of the petals being too
difficult, and inexplicable to the eye even in the flowers themselves
without continually putting them in changed positions.
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