This section is from the book "Wild Flowers Every Child Should Know", by Frederic William Stack. Also available from Amazon: Wild flowers every child should know.
This gallivanting perennial came to us from Europe, and delights to trapse over moist, shady dells, thickets, and turnpikes, where it blossoms gaily during the spring months. It is an old and familiar herb, formerly much used as a "simple" in those homely days when hospitals were few and far between, and skill and scalpel were less in vogue in the medical line, and "Angels with lint and lance, and God's messenger, the ambulance," were blessings yet to record. Dear, quaint, old Gerarde! Quoth he: "Boiled in mutton-broth, it helpeth weake and acking backs." It has a peculiar, disagreeable odour, and a bitterish, somewhat aromatic taste, and cattle purposely avoid it. As a domestic remedy it is said to be a gentle stimulant and tonic, and useful in lung troubles. The creeping and trailing stalk grows sometimes eighteen inches in length, with ascending branches. It is square and leafy, and roots at the joints. The small, roundish, evergreen leaves are set in pairs, on long, slender, curving stems, which are flattened and grooved on one side. They are heart-shaped at the base, and their margins are cut with broad, rounded scallops. Their surface is soft and downy to the touch. The rather large, light, bluish purple, tubular flowers are two-lipped. The upper lip, which arches over the four unequal stamens and pistil, is erect and notched at the middle. The spreading lower lip, which is spotted with dark purple, is three-lobed, the middle one being much enlarged. The long, ribbed, tubular calyx is unequally five-parted. The flowers are borne in sparse clusters from the axils of the leaves. The Ground-ivy often forms dense, green mats, and is found in blossom from March to May, from Newfoundland, Ontario and Minnesota, south to Georgia and Kansas.
 
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