Hirsute Stamens. Pogostemon cablin, Patchouli, Butterfly House, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Here's a pretty Lipped Flower - Labiatae or Lamiaceae, in English mostly called the Mint or Deadnettle family. The family is large and flowers range from big to petite, such as our Patchouli; these flowers are a mere 3 or 4 mm tall. Their small size is made up for grandly, though, by the great aroma of the plant. Patchouli is known, I would think, by anyone who uses cosmetics and also by the faithful who light incense, and perhaps by tea drinkers.
Pogostemon cablin was first described under the name Mentha cablin in 1837 in the flora of the Philippines written by Francisco Manuel Blanco (1778-1845). Blanco was a Spanish Augustinian friar sent as a missionary to the Philippines. He learned Tagalog and wrote and translated many devotional - and also medicinal - works in that language for his charges.
But once there, he became thrilled, too, by the rich vegetative world. Blanco's duties took him all over the archipelago, and he collected and described the plants he encountered with as his only handbook at first great Linnaeus's Systema vegetabilium. Much later he was also able to use the works by Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu (1748-1836). Blanco's flora (1837) - illustrated magnificently in a second edtion published posthumously in 1877 - is one of the first handbooks for Philippine plants. Blanco's personal foreword is much worth reading because it describes his road to botany. That second edition is prefaced by a good biography of the man.
Blanco specifically named our plant 'cablin', derived, it is said, from the 'cabalam' of a local language; whether Tagalog or not, I don't know. Blanco himself gives a list of derivations.
Hirsute Stamens. Pogostemon cablin, Patchouli, Butterfly House, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Here's a pretty Lipped Flower - Labiatae or Lamiaceae, in English mostly called the Mint or Deadnettle family. The family is large and flowers range from big to petite, such as our Patchouli; these flowers are a mere 3 or 4 mm tall. Their small size is made up for grandly, though, by the great aroma of the plant. Patchouli is known, I would think, by anyone who uses cosmetics and also by the faithful who light incense, and perhaps by tea drinkers.
Pogostemon cablin was first described under the name Mentha cablin in 1837 in the flora of the Philippines written by Francisco Manuel Blanco (1778-1845). Blanco was a Spanish Augustinian friar sent as a missionary to the Philippines. He learned Tagalog and wrote and translated many devotional - and also medicinal - works in that language for his charges.
But once there, he became thrilled, too, by the rich vegetative world. Blanco's duties took him all over the archipelago, and he collected and described the plants he encountered with as his only handbook at first great Linnaeus's Systema vegetabilium. Much later he was also able to use the works by Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu (1748-1836). Blanco's flora (1837) - illustrated magnificently in a second edtion published posthumously in 1877 - is one of the first handbooks for Philippine plants. Blanco's personal foreword is much worth reading because it describes his road to botany. That second edition is prefaced by a good biography of the man.
Blanco specifically named our plant 'cablin', derived, it is said, from the 'cabalam' of a local language; whether Tagalog or not, I don't know. Blanco himself gives a list of derivations.