Читать книгу Wayside and Woodland Blossoms - Step Edward - Страница 13

Table of Contents

Occasionally in woods and copses the rambler will come across this plant, which flowers in April and May. It is not truly a native, but has become naturalized in England and the South of Scotland. Time was when well-nigh every garden had its clump of Lungwort, for it had a splendid reputation for chest complaints. It is from these garden specimens that our naturalized plants have originated.

Lungwort. Jerusalem Cowslip. Pulmonaria officinalis. —Boragineæ.—

Lady’s Smock. Cuckoo-flower. Cardamine pratensis. Shepherd’s purse. Capsella bursa-pastoris.

—Cruciferæ.—

Lungwort has a creeping rootstock, from which arise stalked, ovate, hairy leaves, dark green in colour, with white blotches. On the erect flowering stem the leaves are smaller and not stalked. The flowers consist of a five-angled calyx, a funnel-shaped corolla with five lobes, five stamens, style arising from a group of four nutlets and terminated by a rounded stigma. Like the cowslip, Lungwort is dimorphous. It secretes plenty of honey, and is consequently much visited by bees. Before the flowers open they are pink, but afterwards change to purple. As a garden flower it is also known as the Jerusalem Cowslip.

The name is from the Latin, Pulmo, the lungs, in allusion to the leaves, spotted like the lungs, and which under the doctrine of signatures was held to indicate that it was good for consumption and other lung troubles.

There is another species which is really indigenous to this country, the Narrow-leaved Lungwort (P. angustifolia), but it is very rare, and occurs only in the Isle of Wight, the New Forest, and in Dorset. It is taller than P. officinalis, the leaves of a different shape, and the corolla finally bright blue.