MEDICINAL PART. The flowers.
    Description. -- Lavandula Vera is a small shrub from one to two feet high, but sometimes attaining six feet. The leaves are oblong-linear or lanceolate, entire, opposite, and sessile. The flowers are of lilac color, small and in whorls.
 Lavandula Spica is more dwarfish and more hoary than the last. Leaves oblong-lanceolate. This plant is not used in medicine, but furnishes the oil of spike, much used in the preparation of artistical varnishes and by porcelain painters.
    History. -- Lavandula Vera grows in the dry soils of Southern Europe, and flowers in July and August.  It is largely cultivated in this country. The whole plant is aromatic, but the flowers are the parts used, and should be gathered shortly after their appearance, and carefully dried. The disease to which this plant is subject can only be prevented by not allowing them to grow too closely together.
    Properties and Uses. -- It is a tonic, stimulant, and carminative, useful mostly in diseases of the nervous system.