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Myrica gale L.

Sweet Gale

Modern name

Myrica gale L.

Synonyms

Gale palustris (Lam.) Chev.; Myrica palustris Lam.

A deciduous shrub 2 to 4 ft high, bushy; wood and leaves fragrant when crushed. Leaves oblanceolate, tapering and entire at the base, toothed and broadest near the apex, 1 to 212 in. long, 13 to 34 in. wide, glossy and dark green above, paler, more or less downy, and with scattered shining glands beneath; stalk 18 in. long. Flowers of the male plant produced during May and June in crowded, stalkless catkins, each catkin 13 to 58 in. long, set with close, overlapping, shining, concave scales. Fruit catkins about as long, but stouter; composed of closely set, resinous nutlets 112 in. wide. The flowers are borne on the naked wood of the previous year; the sexes usually on separate plants.

Native of the higher latitudes of all the northern hemisphere; common in Great Britain, especially in the north, usually in moist peaty places, and on moors. In gardens the sweet gale is sometimes grown for the sake of its pleasant fragrance when handled. On the Yorkshire moors branches were, and perhaps still are, used to flavour a kind of home-made beer known as ‘gale beer’, considered to be very efficacious for slaking thirst.

var. tomentosa C. DC. – Young wood, both surfaces of the leaf (but especially the lower one), very downy. Siberia, Japan, N. Korea, etc.


Genus

Myrica

Other species in the genus