pilosa) lifts short racemes of blue flowers
that are only half an inch long, and whose lower lip and lobes at
either side are shorter than the arched upper lip. Most parts of
the plant are covered with down, the lower stem being especially
hairy; and this fact determines the species when connected with
its rather distant pairs of indented, veiny leaves, ranging from
oblong to egg-shaped, and furnished with petioles which grow
gradually shorter toward the top, where pairs of bracts, seated
on the stem, part to let the flowers spring from their axils.
The LARGER or HYSSOP SKULLCAP (S. integrifolia) rarely has a dent
in its rounded oblong leaves ,which, like the stem, are covered
with fine down. Its lovely, bright blue flowers, an inch long,
the lips of about equal length, are grouped opposite each other
at the top of a stem that never lifts them higher than two feet;
and so their beauty is often concealed in the tall grass of
roadsides and meadows and the undergrowth of woods and thickets,
where they bloom from May to August, from southern New England to
the Gulf of Mexico, westward to Texas.
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