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The sage is a representative of the large botanical order known as the Mint family, the labiates, or gaping two-lipped flowers, the arched hood here answering to the upper lip, the spreading base forming the lower lip, which is usually designed as a convenient threshold for the insects while sipping the nectar deep within the tube.
For the support of this conception of a specific or varietal retrograde change many other facts are afforded by the distribution of the characteristic color and of the several patterns of the lips of other labiates, and our general understanding of the relationships of the species and genera in this family may in a broad sense be based on the comparison of these seemingly subordinate characteristics.
Poor, simple Ivan, did you not hear our souls speak to each other? July 16th. Yesterday I carried my labiates to him. After some desultory talk, I endeavored to describe as best I could the characters of this interesting family. He listened to me out of complaisance.
Such forms often occur in the wild state and seem to have a geographic distribution as narrowly circumscribed as in the case of many small species. Those of the labiates chiefly belong to southern Europe and are unknown at least in some parts of the other countries. On the contrary terminal pelories of Scrophularia nodosa are met with from time to time in Holland.
Like all fruticulose labiates which have a hard compact tissue and contain much oily matter, the lavender absorbs less moisture than herbs which are soft and spongy, and, as it always prefers a dry calcareous, even stony, soil, the northern cultivators find that by selecting such localities the tissues of the plant take up so little water that the frost does not injure them.
Such facts clearly point to a common origin, and as only the terminal flowers are affected by the malformation, the fertility of the whole plant is evidently not seriously infringed upon. Before leaving the labiates, we may cite a curious instance of pelorism in the toad-flax, which is quite different from the ordinary peloric variety.
But then we find that labiates and their allies among the dicotyledonous plants, and orchids among the monocotyledonous ones are especially subjected to this alteration. In both groups many genera and a long list of species could be quoted as proof.
The family of the labiates seems to be essentially rich in terminal pelories, as for instance in the wild sage or Salvia and the dead-nettle or Lamium. Here the pelories have long and straight corolla-tubes, which are terminated by a whorl of four or five segments.
This afternoon I took a long walk in the woods. I had succeeded in gathering some labiates, the dead nettle, the pyramidal bell-flower and the wild thyme, when in the midst of my occupation, I heard the trot of a horse. It was he, a bunch of herbs and flowers in his hand.
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