Sought by wind and shower,
Fondled by the night!"[61]
The Prunella, or Self-Heal.
Fig. 48.—"Rejoicing in the shade of over-arching elms."
In your summer-walks, dear reader,—summer-walks through green lanes rejoicing in the shade of over-arching elms, or along woodland glades, carpeted with odorous turf,—you must frequently have met with an herbaceous plant, whose purple-blue flowers, arranged in regular succession, form the prettiest coloured cones imaginable at the extremity of the stem and branches. To this plant, the self-heal, we shall return immediately. Perhaps you have passed it by somewhat indifferently, for we pay little heed to common things, and on the threshold of woods, and in their winding avenues, the self-heal is very common. The celebrated German botanist, Bock (or Tragus) bestowed upon it, two centuries before the epoch of Linnæus, the name of Prunella vulgaris. The specific appellation, vulgaris, is here employed very appropriately, but we should commit a grave error if we supposed every species qualified as vulgaris to be "common." For example, the Lysimachia vulgaris, a species of Primulaceæ, is far from being found everywhere.
Fig. 49.—The Prunella.
Pray, take the trouble to pick one lowly specimen; being specially careful to take up the whole plant, stem, root, and branch. Lying along the ground, it seems larger than it really is. Its root is a creeper; at the level of the insection of the leaves some small shoots project, the fibrous radicles which compel the lower part of the stem to crawl like the bugle, Ajuga reptans.