Mullein is a weed with many qualities

Mullein is too good a plant to be called a weed. Instead, call it by one of its nicknames, such as Adam's flannel, candlewick, hare's beard, velvet plant, feltwort, or lungwort.

If you are not familiar with mullein, look around and you're bound to see its spires of buttery yellow flowers rising 6 feet high along roadsides. The spires occasionally branch like candelabras, bringing a similar statuesque elegance to parts of the country.

Most of mullein's leaves sit in a rosette close to the ground. The leaves are large, greyish, and covered with fine hairs that make the leaves as soft as felt.

The only thing weedy about mullein is that it is so easy to grow. And perhaps it's been called a weed just because it has cousins that some people believe are more civilized. One of its cultivated cousins has purple centers to its flowers, but how much drama can a flower stalk only 3 feet high elicit? The same might be said for another relative, olympian mullein. The main thing olympian about this mullein is its origin in Greece.

No need to leave it to chance where mullein turns up in your garden. Plants now flowering will not repeat the show because, as a biennial, mullein plants die after flowering.

As a sometime weed, mullein is easy to propagate. Let plants self-sow seedlings or collect and sow the seed deliberately yourself. Nothing special is needed. Another way to propagate mullein is by root cuttings, which are pencil thick pieces of root you dig in spring and then plant.

Besides beauty, mullein offers herbal medicine. Usually the leaves are steeped in water to make a tea or syrup for throat and lung problems. The herbalist Nicholas Culpeper, writing in the 17th century, also recommended mullein as a cure for warts.

A nonmedical use for mullein is the bright yellow dye that can be extracted from the flowers. The most charming use of all is to pull a few of the large, soft leaves from the plant in spring and offer them to a child as a doll blanket.