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- Ground Ivy is of the Mint family. It is yet another invader from Europe. It possesses creeping stems (they can grow upwards to 2') and has small, blue-violet flowers (in twos or fours) whorled in the axils of scalloped heartshaped leaves. The flower is a 2 lipped corolla. The lower lip is 3 lobed with the center one having a cleft stretching out like a "tongue." On this "tongue" is a set of deeply coloured set of rails, purple, leading back into the throat of the corolla, where the rails continue together with extras left and right. Roland points out that there are two varieties the smaller of the two, g. micrantha, being a weed, is to be found "around buildings, in shady places, on roadsides and in fields, and often a bad weed around habitations where it forms large patches almost impossible to eradicate. It is considered by many to be a weed "since it roots readily at the nodes and spreads rapidly." The name "gill," incidentally, comes form the French guiller, to ferment; it was used to help ferment or flavour beer.
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_______________________________Peter Landry
2011 (2019)