In many countries some of the most beautiful and noticeable flowers are commonly found in grain-fields. England’s scarlet poppies flood her farm-lands with glorious color in early summer; while the bluets lighten the corn-fields of France. Our grain-fields seem to have no native flower peculiar to them; but often we find a trespasser of foreign descent hiding among the wheat or straying to the roadsides in early summer, whose deep-tinted blossoms secure an instant welcome from the flower-lover if not from the farmer. “What hurte it doeth among corne! the spoyle unto bread, as well in colour, taste, and unwholesomeness, is better known than desired,” wrote Gerarde. The large dark seeds fill the ground wheat with black specks, and might be injurious if existing in any great quantity. Its former generic name was Agrostemma, signifying crown of the fields. Its present one of Lychnis, signifies a light or lamp.
Blue Vervain. Simpler’s Joy.
Verbena hastata. Vervain Family.
Four to six feet high. Leaves.—Opposite, somewhat lance-shaped, the lower often lobed and sometimes halberd-shaped at base. Flowers.—Purple, small, in slender erect spikes. Calyx.—Five-toothed. Corolla.—Tubular, somewhat unequally five-cleft. Stamens.—Two, in pairs. Pistil.—One.
Along the roadsides in midsummer we notice these slender purple spikes, the appearance of which would be vastly improved if the tiny blossoms would only consent to open simultaneously.
PLATE XCII
BLUE VERVAIN.—V. hastata.
In earlier times the vervain was beset with classic associations. It was claimed as the plant which Virgil and other poets mention as being used for altar-decorations and for the garlands of sacrificial beasts. It was believed to be the herba sacra of the ancients, until it was understood that the generic title Verbena was a word which was applied to branches of any description which were used in religious rites. It certainly seems, however, to have been applied to some especial plant in the time of Pliny, for he writes that no plant was more honored among the Romans than the sacred Verbena. In more modern times as well the vervain has been regarded as an “herb of grace,” and has been gathered with various ceremonies and with the invocation of a blessing, which began as follows:
Hallowed be thou, Vervain,
As thou growest on the ground,
For in the Mount of Calvary