Mullein.Verbascum Thapsus.High Taper.Candlewick.
Found on dry, sandy soil, in fields, and among rocks, from June to September.
The single, leafy stalk rises from a foot-tuffet, to the height of 3 or 4 feet, usually, although it varies considerably; it is round, stout, and tough-fibred, covered with wool, which tempers the green and makes it whitey in tone.
The large (from 6 to 12 inches long) foot-leaves have very prominent ribs which show chiefly underneath, entire margins, and are thick, like a blanket with a very woolly surface; the stalk leaves are smaller, and more pointed, and are attached to the stalk for a part of their length,—they are otherwise like the large leaves. In color a whitish green.
The corolla is rather large, somewhat unequally 5-parted with rounded lobes, it is of a fine texture and smooth; in color, a clear pale yellow. The tips of the 5 stamens are orange; the pistil is green, and so is the 5-parted, woolly calyx. The flowers are set closely and numerously in a long, compact, club-shaped, terminal spike.
When the flower-stalk shoots up the foot-tuffet withers, and loses the richer color which, in spring, belongs to its leafage. The rosette forms in the fall,—if potted and wintered in the house, free from the choking dust of the highway, it develops a superfine quality of wool.