Mullein
Verbascum thapsus
- Grey flannel rosettes
- Tall single spike
- Torches and tapers
Mullein sends up a single flannel-leaved spike that can pass head height, and the dried stalk dipped in tallow burns steadily enough to serve as a torch. That practical fact produced the folk names: hag's taper, candlewick plant, torches.
Because it burns, it acquired funerary and processional associations across Europe. Because it stands upright and alone in poor ground, it acquired protective ones, planted at the corners of a plot as a kind of botanical sentry.
The first-year plant is a low rosette of soft grey leaves and gives no hint of the second year's spike, which has led more than one gardener to weed out something they were waiting for.