Scrophularia (skrofularia)

[NL. (Rivinus, 1690), so called because reputed a remedy for scrofula, or perhaps on account of the knots on the roots resembling scrofula; to the tribe Chelo neæ. It is characterized by flowers with a deeply five-cleft calyx, a nearly globose corolla with four short, flat, erect lobes and one spreading in front, four stamens with one-celled anthers, and often a scale-like staminode representing a fifth stamen. The fruit is a rigid two-celled septicidal capsule, roundish and commonly sharp-pointed, taining very numerous wrinkled seeds. There are about 120 species, chiefly Old World plants of the Mediterranean con re gion, also rex tending widely through north temperate zone, but very sparingly in America, where 3 spe cies occur in the western United States, one of which, S. nodosa, figwort, extends to the IMG:content-0393.png:[blocks in formation] The Inflorescence of Figwort ( Scro phularia nodosa), a, the flower; b, the fruit; c, a seed; d, a leaf. Atlantic and to Canada. They are smooth or bristly herbs, sometimes shrubby, and often fetid. They bear leaves which are chiefly opposite, and are often covered with pellucid dots, and loose cymes of greenish, purplish, or yellow flowers disposed in a terminal thyrsus. The spe cies are known as figwort, especially S. aquatic a of England, also called water - betony, bullwort, and bishop's - leaves, and S. nodosa, a widely diffused species of Europe and America, used formerly in medicine in the treatment of scrofula, and occasionally still in making ointments for ulcers, etc. See brown wort.