Broadleaf Enchanter's Nightshade

Broadleaf Enchanter's Nightshade

Circaea lutetiana

This plant is cool for a lot of reasons.  First of all ... its name!  In Homer's Odyssey, the magical goddess Circe would invite men to a feast, but would lace the food with an herb which would drug them, then she would turn them into pigs.  Early botanists decided that this was the plant and therefore named it Enchanter's Nightshade and gave it the genus name Circaea.  Plants have way better names than birds!

Far less interesting is the fact that the flowers have only two petals, although deeply cleft and look like four. There are only a very few species with flowers that only have two petals.

The flowers have two deeply cleft petals, giving the appearance of a four petaled flower

Opposite leaves with tiny little teeth

The flowerheads (racemes in this case), exhibit a progression that a lot of plants do. The topmost part has the beginning of the flowers and the bottom-most part has the seedpods. This way you can see the whole progression of the flowers from buds to seeds.