_Verbascum Thapsus_
_Flowers_--Yellow, 1 in. across or less, seated around a thick, dense,
elongated spike. Calyx 5-parted; corolla of 5 rounded lobes; 5
anther-bearing stamens, the 3 upper ones short, woolly; 1 pistil.
_Stem:_ Stout, 2 to 7 ft. tall, densely woolly, with branched hairs.
_Leaves:_ Thick, pale green, velvety-hairy, oblong, in a rosette oil the
ground; others alternate, strongly clasping the stem.
_Preferred Habitat_--Dry fields, banks, stony waste land.
_Flowering Season_--June-September.
_Distribution_--Minnesota and Kansas, eastward to Nova Scotia and
Florida. Europe.
Leaving the fluffy thistle-down he has been kindly scattering to the
four winds, the goldfinch spreads his wings for a brief, undulating
flight, singing in waves also as he goes to where tall, thick-set
mullein stalks stand like sentinels above the stony pasture. Here
companies of the exquisite little black and yellow minstrels delight to
congregate with their sombre families and feast on the seeds that
rapidly follow the erratic flowers up the gradually lengthening spikes.
“I have come three thousand miles to see the mullein cultivated in a
garden, and christened the velvet plant,” says John Burroughs in “An
October Abroad.” But even in England it grows wild, and much more
abundantly in southern Europe, while its specific name is said to have
been given it because it was so common in the neighborhood of Thapsus;
but whether the place of that name in Africa, or the Sicilian town
mentioned by Ovid and Virgil, is not certain. Strange that Europeans
should labor under the erroneous impression that this mullein is native
to America, whereas here it is only an immigrant from their own land.
Rapidly taking its course of empire westward from our seaports into
which the seeds smuggled their passage among the ballast, it is now more
common in the Eastern states, perhaps, than any native. Forty or more
folk-names have been applied to it, mostly in allusion to its alleged
curative powers, its use for candle-wick and funeral torches in the
Middle Ages. The generic title, first used by Pliny, is thought to be a
corruption of _Barbascum_ (= with beards) in allusion to the hairy
filaments or, as some think, to the leaves.
Of what use is this felt-like covering to the plant? The importance of
protecting the delicate, sensitive, active cells from intense light,
draught, or cold, have led various plants to various practices; none
more common, however, than to develop hairs on the epidermis of their
leaves, sometimes only enough to give it a downy appearance, sometimes
to coat it with felt, as in this case, where the hairs branch and
interlace. Fierce sunlight in the exposed dry situations where the
mullein grows; prolonged drought, which often occurs at flowering
season, when the perpetuation of the species is at stake; and the
intense cold which the exquisite rosettes formed by year-old plants must
endure through a winter before they can send up a flower-stalk the
second spring--these trials the well-screened, juicy, warm plant has
successfully surmounted through its coat of felt. Humming birds have
been detected gathering the hairs to line their tiny nests. The light,
strong stalk makes almost as good a cane as bamboo, especially when the
root end, in running under a stone, forms a crooked handle. Pale country
beauties rub their cheeks with the velvety leaves to make them rosy.