Yaaayy! There was an aconite! The plant was also known as Wolfsbane and Monkshood. If her memory wasn't failing her, it was an essential ingredient in making the Wolfsbane Potion. Hmm.. the alternative names made sense then.

Crouching once more, Beezus jotted down on her Herb Table the necessary information about the plant. Pity...it had very attractive flowers but the leaves were poisonous. Guess nothing can't have too much of everything.




Okay, three more to go. Just exactly as she stood up, she saw a bunch of blue molies a few steps from her. Without second thoughts, she dashed immediately to its site. Her eyes were focused on them that she didn't notice a student standing at the side and her body bumped into his. "Aww. Sorry!" Beezus looked up and saw Daichi. "Long time no see." GRIN.

It was good that they were getting to use their book for stuff because even if West knew some plant junk, he sure didn't know all of the chart stuff by heart. Not yet at least. He would after this class. West chose the Fenugreek by the smell of it. It was kind of bitter. And kind of herb-y. Which was kind of the point of all this right?

He spent some time looking at the plant and comparing it to the information in the book, and recorded the details.

... was it just him or did something reek of garlic?

You know, aside from the garlic.

After she'd found the Rosemary she no longer knew exactly what to do, roaming around randomly as she tried to find something else she'd classify a herb... something that had was used for medicine... looking around for anything fitting the description her eyes finally landed on a plant with Green-grey spiky leaves... Aloe Vera!

She had no clue if others would count it a herb, but simply put, it did have multiple uses, mainly used in helping ease pain of sun burns from memory so it must have been some sort of herb!

SPOILER!!: table

Smiling at the notes she'd taken she stood and started looking like everyone else was, again...

Well, if it was good enough for snakes it was good enough for West. He examined the moneywort curiously, noting the trailing ground cover look to the plant. It was more interesting when you read about it than when you looked at it though, and his book had plenty of interesting things to say. Like the healing snakes bit. So it was sometimes called serpentaria on account of snakes used it in the wild. That was cool.

Would it work as well on Gryffindors?

West tucked his book under his arm and browsed for another herb.

Minerva stood back up from the rose hip looking down at it again. She would have never believed it to be an herb if she wouldn't have found it in class. To look at it, it really just looked like a big great plant. In Minerva's mind she thought herbs were smaller and only produced small flowers on them. Well this is what class was all about learning, right...

Moving on she came to a plant that she did know. Leaning down to spell the fragrance of one of her favorite smells, she looked at the small purple flowers again. Yes, it was like a magnet to her if the plant was purple she would go to it. Pulling out her parchment she began to right not needing her book for the descriptions at least. Then she turned to her book to see if there were anything else she missed, such as uses she wasn't aware of. Hmmm she thought you can use lavender in jellies? That was new information to Minerva. She continued to write the rest of her information down on her parchment.

What was thiiiiiis itty bitty plant? West bent down and brought his face closer to examine it. Huh. Backing up, he looked in his book until he found it. Eyebright? For eye problems. He wondered about how anyone found that out to begin with if their eyes were bung and they couldn't even see the plant. Okay. He read a bit more, about how its roots are parasitic. Cool. West wrote it up and then started looking around, his attention severely beginning to wander.

One more then he could go bug Aspen?

Wandering around the greenhouse, it took awhile for Orr to decide on what herbs she wanted to describe in her chart.

Tucked away in a corner was a lovely little plant with little rough leaves- oh, she thought to herself, she knew what herb that was!

She took out her parchment and quickly wrote down:

Lemon! Lemon is a herb too! That was the thought that popped into the young Gryffindor's mind, as she was thinking of finding two more. Yeah.. lemons were very much useful, both in potions and medicines.

And there was a lemon plant in the greenhouse too, in the corner. It was a lemon plant for sure, seeing he lemons hanging from the short branches. Elated at having found her fourth herb, Ira went to the corner to the plant, for noting down its appearance.

The leaves look as common as any plant. She brushed her hand against the plant, smiling as it responded with a slight sway. Aw! that looked beautiful. Returning back to the work at hand, she began writing down the details in her table:


After being done with writing the details about lemon as much as she knew, Ira petted the plant and brushed softly her hands over it, before moving over to the next plant.

It took a while for West to find another herb to do. Mostly cos there were soooo many and he was avoiding the ones that other students were crowding around just because it was more interesting that way and as much as he liked herbology, he was starting to get antsy and ready to do something eeeeelse.



He settled on the one with the five leaves, which attracted him cos it looked a bit like a strawberry plant even if it didn't actually have strawberries. The book said it was sometimes called a 'barren strawberry' which made sense to West. He wrote down a bunch of stuff, filling in the chart and making a face at the love divination part. Ew.

West checked over his stuff again and decided he was done. Now to go bug Aspen!

Becoming quite aware that a crowd of students was starting to form at the nettle plants, Ethan squeezed his way out of that corner, starting towards another area of the greenhouse. As he approached a row of greenery, a force from behind sent the fifth year propelling forward into one of the potted plants. Throwing a hand out to catch himself from being knocked down, he inadvertently pushed over one of the plants. Ethan quickly righted the fallen herb, scooping up some of the dirt that fell out and settling it back in.

A minor annoyance, he shrugged it off as he heard an apology from behind him and turned to match the voice with a face. A quick look told him that she was a housemate but did not know her - not that that particular fact was surprising to the boy. Ethan hastily wiped the remaining dirt from his hand onto the front of his robes as he shrugged, "No worries."

"No, I don't imagine you do... I'm Ethan," he responded in kind as he began to stretch out his hand then quickly thought the better of it and withdrew. It was still a bit dirty... but what did he expect out in the greenhouse? "I'm sorta new here," he added, turning his attention back to the plant he knocked over. Upon closer inspection, Ethan saw that a couple leaves had broken off when he had knocked it over. Breaking them set off an aroma that confirmed the plants identity for him as he touched the soft, furry leaves.

Ethan pulled out his parchment again and began jotting down his notes as he turned back to the girl. Giving her an appraising look, he noticed she seemed about his age - she would probably know a bit about this school. "So, Nell," he said as he finished writing. "What's there to do for fun around here?" He seriously hoped she wasn't about to say 'reading books at the study tables'. There had to be some Ravenclaws that didn't think that books were the life of the party... or he was going to be in for a long three years.

Dylan walked around to look for another herb that he could add to his parchment, as he looked at the others whizzing around getting all the herbs onto their parchment. Did they seriously like looking for herbs? Yeah sure they were learning things at the same time but come on it was kinda boring to just look for some plants and write down what they were. Anyways it was something that he had to do since he was here in this class, it would be difficult to sneak out since his head of house was the professor of this subject.

He then saw a smallish plant that had pink flowers on it, really? pink? herbs had pink flowers? unless this wasnt a herb actually. So he proceeded to look through his textbook to see if he could match the plant with anything in his herb textbook, after a bit of flicking through his textbook he thought he finally found the plant. It seemed to be called Oregano, he had never even heard of it! No wonder he didn't know it was a herb since he hadn't heard of it, actually he hadn't heard of any herbs but then that was normal right? not to know herb names. He filled out the table and he then moved onto look for another herb.

Three done, only two left to go. He was surprised by how much he was enjoying finding out about all these herbs. He never knew that herbs could have these cool names like Malus. It sounded evil and awesome.

He was still having to open his textbook every time he found a herb. But he was getting faster at identifying them. Nigel started his walk around again looking for an awesome herb like Malus. Only his eyes were drawn to a pure green herb.

Nigel was up to it and looks at it. Then he opens up his textbook and sees it is thyme. Well that is a interesting name. Nigel starts his examination of it hoping to find Malus next time.

Sarah looked around more and then she saw the Asphodel. She quickly wrote down the necccasary information.
. It looked rather like lily really. Yet did the whole plant really have to go to waste,as they only needed the roots? She sighed -she hated wasting things. Surely there were more useful items in it. She ought to look it up somewhere.

Woot!!! She was almost done. She went back to searching for more herbs. Maybe she could sniff something out? No, of course she wouldn't...she wasn't a dog. She had a certain imagine to uphold for crying out loud. She she just continued to look at green leaf after green leaf. She was beginning to become a bit bored with the whole thing.

She turned a corner and she was eye level with some Fennel. Oh yes, she definitely knew what Fennel was. It was gross and anybody that used it was clearly gross as well. It was a tall plant with feathery leaves. It was also a vegetable...and that was just gross!

Then Sarah spotted something that she had seen at her aunts house, when she was visiting. Her cousins had lots of spots all over their bodies, called Chicken Pox or something. They were really itchy and Jane, her teenage cousin had ait really bad, and being rather vain, Jane was always fretting about scars. Her aunt put a light rose coloured lotion on them which came out of a box which had a picture of the herb she was looking at now. It was called Chamomile, which it said to relax people or something. Her aunt said that she also had Chamomile, in fact she had suggested it to Sarah's mother when Rebbeca Edwards told her sister that Sarah had trouble sleeping at night. Her aunt said that she had some in her garden, as decoration o line the footpaths, it hadn apple like scent as well. It smelled nice as Sarah stood by it, examining it and writing down in her table
The list was filling up fast. Sarah's eyes darted again, she needed two more

All she had to do was find one more herb/plant thingy. She made her way through a mob of students that were all standing, staring at the same herb. Jeeze. Atleast Hannah had a mind of her own and could figure things out all by herself. Hunting for her last herb a pretty shrub happened to catch her eye.


She walked over to it and with the closer look she realized that it was Rosemary. It had very pretty flowers. She saw pink, white, purple and even blue flowers, and the leaves on it were like needles. What did she know about Rosemary? Hannah racked her brain. Oh yes, Rosemary leaves are used in Mediterranean cuisine. Also they used the oil for perfumes.




Man she was glad that this part was over for her. Sure she had her textbook as a guide but a lot of the herbs kinda looked the same to her. She went off to find Elliot to see if she needed any help.

She had been looking for it, after all she recognized it from her garden. They did have herbs in her garden after all. Her mom checked it for bugs (there sometimes were...) and they used it a lot in their food, especially in their soup. Yes, it was parsley. She then notated what she saw, after all Parsley is very useful.

Dylan moved on from his last herb to go look for another herb, he saw a few students crowding around a herb and decided that he didn't want to do that one . He didnt have a reason not liking that herb he just didn't like it, well he didn't like this whole task but that was a different matter. So he moved on and looked for one that seemed to have no-one around it or even one that seemed cool looking cause that would make this task cool!

But he couldn't see any cool looking herbs, maybe herbs weren't cool looking at all and just plain green things. Yup there was another greenish looking herb, he went over to it and flicked through his book to look for this herb. He kept looking and looking and he just couldn't find this herb, why was this one not in the book. Maybe it wasn't a herb? was that it? but it looked like a herby plant so it had to be in here. "Come on where are you? you stu..... you plant!" he said as he flicked through the book until he saw the page that looked like the plant "Finally!" he said frustrated and he filled out the table of this herb. "Now onto the next one!" he stood up and went off to look for another one

Just one more thing to find. Sarah looked more, taking in the scents of the place.Then she saw something that brought her back to a memory:
It was one of those days that everything was happening. A never ending stampede of things to do. In her frustration her usually energetic, yet now tired mother said, “oh, what I would do for more time”. Charles gave a cheeky smile and went outside and reappeared a few moments later, a bundle of thyme in his hands, “is this okay! Here is more thyme”. Her mother smiled and thanked her son for his efforts. His lightening up invigorated her so she stopped feeling so lethargic.

Dylan walked towards the next herb while dragging his feet he really didn't want to do this but seeing as his head of house was teaching he couldn't exactly stop and just sit to one side. What would that say about Gryffindors? and the professor wouldn't be happy about that, he wondered if there was any way he could make this more fun. Just then a plan came to mind and he looked around and made sure that no-one was looking at him and he hid behind a plant that had no teeth and shook it a bit "I am the bestest plant ever!!" DJ said in a high pitched voice before crawling away from the plant as fast as he could and acted like he was looking at Herbs at the other end of the greenhouse.

Good thing he was looking there cause he saw a herby looking plant, he quickly opened his book keeping a straight face and acting like he was working hard to try and identify the herb that he was looking at cause it was all green and there were alot of green leafed plants in this book. So he would just have to narrow it down by looking at other identification marks, he felt the leaves and narrowed it down a bit. It was a smallish plant and quite bushy so that narrowed it down even further, after looking at other identification he managed to narrow it down to one plant. It was Basil.. he then filled out his chart with Basil information and moved onto finding his final herb before he could say that he had finished this boring task except for pretending to be a plant

Feeling happy that she had managed to find and correctly identified four herbs, Ira lightly skipped along. And she was enjoying petting the plants softly, smiling as they bowed their pretty flowers, or just swayed in response. Really the plants were a delight to watch!

Ouch!

Ira quickly put her finger to her mouth as something pricked her. Nothing too much to draw blood, but it still stung a bit. Turning sideways to see what it was... Nettle! Stinging nettle in fact! See, that was why professor Bentley had always insisted on wearing gloves, which she hadn't worn right now. Because of which she had been stung.

Frowning at the nettle plant, Ira remembered something. Hadn't she once used nettle in making a potion? Which one was it??

Oh yes! The hate potion! Which Professor Lafay had instructed to feed the cute little pygmy puffs, which had then hated her! Oh yes, she remembered that, and not as a good memory certainly!

Anyways, she beamed now as she realized that she had found her fifth and final herb! Stinging Nettle! So she being stung had actually helped her!

So, she updated her table:


There! She had completed her table! With some minutes left to spare!

Aspen's confidence and fearlessness helped alleviate some of his OWN fears. Why SHOULD he be scared of werewolves and mummies and zombies? They would exist even if he WASN'T a Vamp, it just meant that this way he could face them all IMMORTAL like. "Yeahhhhhh, you're right!" he grinned, because what COULD hurt him now? Maybe he should teach Bentley how much more AWESOME meat was than PLANTS...

The thought was quickly eradicated from his mind as Aspen took him to their fourth plant. Asphodel, apparently. Elijah leaned in as the girl whispered, obviously not wanting to give their vampireness away to the rest of their class. He could only imagine the uprising that it would cause! Flamed torches and pitched forks and the lot, most likely!

"Assssphhooodeellll," Elijah repeated in the same, weird reptilian accent that Aspen sometimes took on. Maybe this was the accent of HIS people.

Wait. He was becoming FAR too comfortable with this. This girl had TURNED him into a DEAD, FANG-ridden BLOOD sucker O__________O.

The VampClaw went on to discuss it's use in the Draught of the Living Dead, no doubt the freakin' MASCOT for vampires. "I... I... see," Elijah stammered, clearly losing the confidence in his vampiredom he had just had moments before. Maybe he was transitioning in between human and vampire on the SPOT and that was why he was having the mood swings...? Couldn't he just be SEXY and be done with it?

Elise was off, in search of an herb or two. Or five. Yup. Table and textbook in her hand, Elise crouched down next to the nearest non-woody plant she could see. The flowers were purple, lavender. Elise took a whiff, just to check and it only affirmed her suspicions.

Scribbling the first description, she checked her textbook for the properties and usable parts and whatnot. Sure it was used in cooking, but what else? Right, it was an antibiotic.

SPOILER!!: Five Stages of Becoming a vampire? What stage is Elijah in now?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Leeness

Aspen's confidence and fearlessness helped alleviate some of his OWN fears. Why SHOULD he be scared of werewolves and mummies and zombies? They would exist even if he WASN'T a Vamp, it just meant that this way he could face them all IMMORTAL like. "Yeahhhhhh, you're right!" he grinned, because what COULD hurt him now? Maybe he should teach Bentley how much more AWESOME meat was than PLANTS...

The thought was quickly eradicated from his mind as Aspen took him to their fourth plant. Asphodel, apparently. Elijah leaned in as the girl whispered, obviously not wanting to give their vampireness away to the rest of their class. He could only imagine the uprising that it would cause! Flamed torches and pitched forks and the lot, most likely!

"Assssphhooodeellll," Elijah repeated in the same, weird reptilian accent that Aspen sometimes took on. Maybe this was the accent of HIS people.

Wait. He was becoming FAR too comfortable with this. This girl had TURNED him into a DEAD, FANG-ridden BLOOD sucker O__________O.

The VampClaw went on to discuss it's use in the Draught of the Living Dead, no doubt the freakin' MASCOT for vampires. "I... I... see," Elijah stammered, clearly losing the confidence in his vampiredom he had just had moments before. Maybe he was transitioning in between human and vampire on the SPOT and that was why he was having the mood swings...? Couldn't he just be SEXY and be done with it?

That accent from Elijah, those long SSSsssss's made his garlic breath.... serious. Very serious. The entire greenhouse could probably smell that? So, of course, Aspen made a suggestion, "How's your throat? You should probably try another clove of garlic. Just in case." In case of WHAT was yet to be seen, but Aspen was just watching out for the new vampire.

She took them to their final plant, Verbena.

"Some muggles think this one repels vampires. But those muggles would be silly. The whole plant is used for all sorts of things, but it won't ward ... you know whats... off." WINK. "You probably shouldn't try to eat muggles anyway though." You know, good advice and all.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tegz

West checked over his stuff again and decided he was done. Now to go bug Aspen!

She was forever keeping an eye on West, even when she was very busy mentoring mental vampires. So when he finished, Aspen knew, and waited for him to join her. Did he still have his fangs from Astronomy?

Zack could see that half the class was about to finish up their work and he hadn't even started a sentence of it. So he quickly moved toward the plants that he could recognize and hurriedly wrote what ever came to his mind. He didn't think if his stuff was wrong all he knew that he had to hurry.

So he moved to the first plant that he knew and took a look at it to see that he knew all that was needed to write. He took his quill and wrote notes on the table.