Two of the most frequently used ingredients in witches' cauldrons were the vervain and the rue."The former probably derived its notoriety from the fact of its being sacred to Thor, an honor which marked it out, like other lightning plants, as peculiarly adapted for occult uses," says Mr.Thiselton Dyer in his "Folk-lore of Plants." "Although vervain, therefore, as the enchanter's plant, was gathered by witches to do mischief in their incantations, yet, as Aubrey says, it 'hinders witches from their will,' a circumstance to which Drayton further refers when he speaks of the vervain as ''gainst witchcraft much avayling.'"Now we understand why the children of Shakespeare's time hung vervain and dill with a horseshoe over the door.
In his eighth Eclogue, Virgil refers to vervain as a charm to recover lost love.Doubtless this was the verbena, the herba sacra employed in ancient Roman sacrifices, according to Pliny.
In his day the bridal wreath was of verbena, gathered by the bride herself.
NARROW-LEAVED VERVAIN (V.angustifolia), like the blue vervain, has a densely crowded spike of tiny purple or blue flowers that quickly give place to seeds, but usually there is only one spike at the end of a branch.The leaves are narrow, lance-shaped, acute, saw-edged, rough.From Massachusetts and Florida westward to Minnesota and Arkansas one finds the plant blooming in dry fields from June to August, after the parsimonious manner of the vervain tribe.
It is curious that the vervain, or verbena, employed by brides for centuries as the emblem of chastity, should be one of the notorious botanical examples of a willful hybrid.Generally, the individuals of distinct species do not interbreed; but verbenas are often difficult to name correctly in every case because of their susceptibility to each other's pollen - the reason why the garden verbena may so easily be made to blossom forth into whatever hue the gardener wills.His plants have been obtained, for the most part, from the large-flowered verbena, the beautiful purple, blue, or white species of our Western States (V.
Canadensis) crossed with brilliant-hued species imported from South America.
MAD-DOG SKULLCAP or HELMET-FLOWER; MAD-WEED; HOODWORT(Scutellaria lateriflora) Mint family Flowers - Blue, varying to whitish; several or many, 1/4 in.
long, growing in axils of upper leaves or in 1-sided spike-like racemes.Calyx 2-lipped, the upper lip with a helmet-like protuberance; corolla 2-lipped; the lower, 3-lobed lip spreading;the middle lobe larger than the side ones.Stamens, 4, in pairs, under the upper lip; upper pair the shorter; one pistil, the style unequally cleft in two.Stem: Square, smooth, leafy, branched, 8 in.to 2 ft.high.Leaves: Opposite, oblong to lance-shaped, thin, toothed, on slender pedicles, 1 to 3 in.
long, growing gradually smaller toward top of stem.Fruit: 4nutlets.
Preferred Habitat - Wet, shady ground.
Flowering Season - July-September.
Distribution - Uneven throughout United States and the British Possessions.
By the helmet-like appendage on the upper lip of the calyx, which to the imaginative mind of Linnaeus suggested Scutellum (a little dish), which children delight to spring open for a view of the four tiny seeds attached at the base when in fruit, one knows this to be a member of the skullcap tribe, a widely scattered genus of blue and violet two-lipped flowers, some small to the point of insignificance, like the present species, others showy enough for the garden, but all rich in nectar, and eagerly sought by bees.The wide middle lobe of the lower lip forms a convenient platform on which to alight; the stamens in the roof of a newly opened blossom dust the back of the visitor as he explores the nectary; and as the stamens of an older flower wither when they have shed their pollen, and the style then rises to occupy their position, it follows that, in flying from the top of one spike of flowers to the bottom of another, where the older ones are, the visitor, for whom the whole scheme of color, form, and arrangement was planned, deposits on the sticky top of the style some of the pollen he has brought with him and so cross-fertilizes the flower.When the seeds begin to form and the now useless corolla drops off, the helmet-like appendage on the top of the calyx enlarges and meets the lower lip, so enclosing and protecting the tiny nutlets.After their maturity, either the mouth gapes from dryness, or the appendage drops off altogether, from the same cause, to release the seeds.Old herb doctors, who professed to cure hydrophobia with this species, are responsible for its English misnomer.
Perhaps the most beautiful member of the genus is the SHOWYSKULLCAP (S.serrata), whose blue corolla, an inch long, has its narrow upper lip shorter than the spreading lower one.The flowers are set opposite each other at the end of the smooth stem, which rises from one to two feet high in the woods throughout a southerly and westerly range.As several other skullcaps have distinctly saw-edged leaves, this plant might have been given a more distinctive adjective, thinks one who did not have the naming of 200,000 species!
Above dry, sandy soil from New York and Michigan southward the HAIRY SKULLCAP (S.pilosa) lifts short racemes of blue flowers that are only half an inch long, and whose lower lip and lobes at either side are shorter than the arched upper lip.Most parts of the plant are covered with down, the lower stem being especially hairy; and this fact determines the species when connected with its rather distant pairs of indented, veiny leaves, ranging from oblong to egg-shaped, and furnished with petioles which grow gradually shorter toward the top, where pairs of bracts, seated on the stem, part to let the flowers spring from their axils.