Marrubium vulgare, Linn. Mint Family.
The horehound has been introduced from Europe at various points along our Coast, but it is now so abundant as to seem like an indigenous plant. It has many white-woolly, square stems, and roundish, wrinkly opposite leaves, covered beneath with matted, white-woolly hairs. Its small, white, bilabiate flowers are crowded in the axils of the upper leaves so densely as to appear like whorls. It may be known from the other members of the Mint family by its campanulate calyx with ten strong, recurved teeth.
This has long been used in medicine as a tonic, and is especially esteemed by our Spanish-Californians as a remedy for colds and lung troubles.
WHITE EVENING PRIMROSE.
Œnothera Californica, Watson. Evening-Primrose Family.
Hoary pubescent, and more or less villous. Stems.—A foot or so high. Leaves.—Oblanceolate or lanceolate; sinuately toothed or irregularly pinnatifid; two to four inches long. Flowers.—White; turning to rose-color; two inches across. Ovary and Calyx-tube.—Over three inches long. Calyx-lobes.—One inch long; separate at the tips. (See Œnothera for flower-structure.) Hab.—Central and Southern California; especially about the San Bernardino region; not plentiful.
Perhaps the most beautiful of all our evening primroses is this charming white species. Late in the afternoon the handsome silvery foliage begins to show the great white, opening moons of the fragile blossoms. Their silken texture, delicate fragrance, and chaste look make them paramount among blossoms.
It is a most interesting sight to watch the opening of one of the nodding silvery buds. I sat down by one which had already uplifted its head. The calyx-lobes had just commenced to part in the center, showing the white, silken corolla tightly rolled within. It grew larger from moment to moment, when suddenly the calyx-lobes parted with a jerk, and the petals, freed from their bondage, quickly spread wider and wider, as though some spirit within were forcing its way out, while one after another the calyx-lobes were turned downward with a quick, decisive movement. It was a wonderful exhibition of the power of motion in plants. I could now look within and see a magical tangle of yellow anthers delicately draped with cobwebby ropes of pollen.
The stamens take a downward curve toward the lower petal. The anthers have already opened their stores of golden pollen before the unfurling of the buds, so that the somewhat sticky ropes are all ready to adhere to the first moth who visits the flower in search of the delicious and abundant nectar stored in the depths of the long calyx-tube. The day following their opening the blossoms begin to turn to a delicate pink, and the calyx-lobes have a fleshlike look.