Mentha and Monacha agree in being essentially hooded flowers, the upper
petal more or less taking the form of a cup, helmet or hood, which conceals
the tops of the stamens. Of the three lower petals, the lowest is almost
invariably the longest; it sometimes is itself divided again into two, but
may be best thought of as single, and with the two lateral ones,
distinguished in the Menthæ as the apron and the side pockets.

Plate XII. represents the most characteristic types of the blossoms of
Menthæ, in the profile and front views, all a little magnified. The upper
two are white basil, purple spotted--growing here at Brantwood always with
two terminal flowers. The two middle figures are the purple-spotted dead
nettle, Lamium maculatum; and the two lower, thyme: but I have not been
able to draw these as I wanted, the perspectives of the petals being too
difficult, and inexplicable to the eye even in the flowers themselves
without continually putting them in changed positions.

17. The Menthæ are in their structure essentially quadrate plants; their
stems are square, their leaves opposite, their stamens either four or two,
their seeds two-carpeled. But their calices are five-sepaled, falling into
divisions of two and three; and the flowers, though essentially
four-petaled, may divide either the upper or lower petal, or both, into two
lobes, and so present a six-lobed outline. The entire plants, but chiefly
the leaves, are nearly always fragrant, and always innocent. None of them
sting, none prick, and none poison.

18. The Draconids, easily recognizable by their aspect, are botanically
indefinable with any clearness or simplicity. The calyx may be five- or
four-sepaled; the corolla, five- or four-lobed; the stamens may be two,
four, four with a rudimentary fifth, or five with the two anterior ones