United States or North Macedonia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Other some there are which have obtained their names from the admirable qualities that are found to be in them, as Heliotropium, which is the marigold, because it followeth the sun, so that at the sun rising it displayeth and spreads itself out, at his ascending it mounteth, at his declining it waneth, and when he is set it is close shut; Adianton, because, although it grow near unto watery places, and albeit you should let it lie in water a long time, it will nevertheless retain no moisture nor humidity; Hierachia, Eringium, and so throughout a great many more.
The Mackenzie-bean and several other papilionaceous plants, with some new grasses, grow in it. The most interesting plant, however, is a species of Datura, from one to two feet high, which genus has not previously been observed in Australia. I also found species of Heliotropium of a most fragrant odour.
It appears that the Florentines were not satisfied with keeping the preparation of orchilla a mystery from the rest of the world, but that they endeavoured to lead all inquiry into a false channel, by calling it tincture of turnsole, desiring it to be believed, that it was an extract from the heliotropium or turnsole: the Dutch also disguised it in the form of a paste, which they called lacmus or litmus.
The blood-stone, the Heliotropium of the ancients, from the occasional small specks or points of a blood-red color exhibited on its green surface, is even at this very day employed in many parts of England and Scotland to stop a bleeding from the nose; and nettle tea continues a popular remedy for the cure of Urticaria.
Thus Moore uses it: "The heart that has truly loved never forgets, But as truly loves on to the close; As the sunflower turns on her god when he sets The same look that she turned when he rose." It is only for convenience that the modern poets translate the Latin word HELIOTROPIUM, by the English sunflower.
The people sometimes mix the incienso of the Silla with the flowers of the pevetera, another composite plant, the smell of which resembles that of the heliotropium of Peru. The pevetera does not, however, grow on the mountains so high as the zone of the befarias; it vegetates in the valley of Chacao, and the ladies of Caracas prepare from it an extremely pleasant odoriferous water.
Word Of The Day