A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1367 entries
mullein
Mullein is a tall biennial of waste ground and roadside that spends its first year as a rosette of large soft leaves covered in dense white felt, and its second sending up a single unbranched spike of yellow flowers that can reach eight feet. The felt is a coat of branched hairs that reflects sun, holds humidity against the leaf, and deters grazing.
Etymology
The word came into English from French, from the Latin for soft, describing the leaves, which are remarkable to touch. English collected a long list of other names for it, most of them recording a use: candlewick plant, hag’s taper, torches, flannel leaf, and Aaron’s rod. The dried stalk dipped in tallow burns as a torch, which is where several of those come from.
Notes
The leaves have been used as improvised shoe lining, as a poultice, and, inevitably, as an emergency substitute for paper on the trail, which is the property most people who know the plant know it for. The seeds stay viable in soil for over a hundred years, which is why mullein appears in numbers on ground that has just been disturbed after a long time undisturbed.