/Ol
POL EM ONI UM cseruleum.
Ja co b 's Ladder.
P E N T A N D P I A Monogynia•
G e n . C h a r . Cor. in five fegments. Stamina Handing
on five valves which clofe the tube. Stigma
three-cleft. Capjule three-celled, fuperior.
S p e c . C h a r . Leaves pinnated. Flowers ereft. Calyx
longer than the tube of the corolla.
S y n . Polemonium casruleum. Linn. Sp. PI, 230.
Hudf. FI. An. 89. With. Bot. Arr. 215.
P. vulgare cseruleum. Raii Syn. 288.
T h i s , although very common in gardens, is one of the
plants moft rarely found wild in this country. Botanifts of the
laft century gathered it in the romantic and mountainous country
about Malham Cove, in the north of Yorkfhire, where it
ftill grows, as well as in fome parts of Derbylhire (Withering.
A variety with white flowers is very common, fometimes
even from the fame root as the blue ones (Linnteus); the faint
purplifh blue feen in the flowers of this plant, being that which
of all colours is moft apt to vary to white.
Its ftems rife to the height of eighteen or twenty inches,
feldom more. The root is fibrous and perennial.
This plant is abfurdly enough reckoned among the Valerians
by the old authors, with which it has not the leaft affinity
either in appearance, botanical chara&ers, fenfible qualities, or
medical virtues.