Plumbago bear their flowers in racemes. The calyx (the sepals) of each flower is covered in glandular trichomes. These 'hairs' remain sticky after the flower has fallen and the seeds have developed. The seeds are dispersed when the calyx (with the seeds inside) adheres to the fur of passing animals.
During Roman times, the European plant (Plumbago europaea) was known as molybdaena or plumbago. The name, Plumbago, is a reference to lead, plumbum in Latin, the soft gray metal used in early pipes (plumbing). Pliny the Elder wrote, "Molybdaena, that is plumbago, grows everywhere, even on cultivated land....If the eye is licked occasionally with this plant when chewed, there is removed the species of eye trouble called lead (plumbum).
Plumbum, as an eye disease or diseases, was more formally known to Pliny as "si vero horrendum ducent glaucomata plumbum" a name that implies the horrible clouding or dust in the eyes (the white or grayish-blue haze of the eye) and may have referred to cataracts and/or glaucoma. Certainly, having a physician chew leaves, then lick or rub the eye was unpleasant. Worse yet, the sap of Plumbago can blister the skin. One must wonder if the treatment was worse for the patient or the physician.
(Compiled from: "Plumbago", Hortus Third, Staff L.H. Bailey Hortorium, N.Y. College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell University, Macmillan, NY, 1976 and "Book XXV", Natural History, Pliny, trans. W.H.S. Jones, Loeb Classical Library, 2nd ed., Harvard University Press, 2001)
