commerce. The plant is said to have been once cultivated 
to a considerable extent in Gloucestershire; but has long 
since ceased to be so in any part of England. In the hands 
of the dyer it is made to impart a fine rose or ponceau 
colour to silk. In the Levant and Spain, it is much used 
as a culinary ingredient, so it was formerly here. A red 
pigment for painters is made from the stamens. The 
cosmetic rouge, called Vegetable rouge, Spanish vermilion, 
Lake of Carthamus, receives its hue from safflower. The 
seed has a place in the Materia medica, but we believe is 
no longer prescribed in practice. This 1s sometimes called 
Parrot's corn, being a grateful and wholesome food for 
that tribe of birds; altho' noxious, as it is said, to all 
other animals. Allioni enrols it among the native vege- 
tables of the country about Nice, where it grows on dry 
hills, and if not aboriginal is domesticated to a great ex- 
tent. 
An annual plant, sometimes three feet high. Stem whitish, 
upright, solid, rigid, smooth, branched upwards, branches 
scattered and generally fastigiate. Zeaves scattered, loose, 
cauline ones halfclasping, patent, oval, acuminate, veined, 
naked, edge spinously indented; radical ones oblong, nar- 
rowed towards the base. Flowers capitate or artichoke- 
shaped, standing upon a thickened fistular terminal pe- 
duncle continuous with each branch, smelling something 
like the true saffron. Calyr:of numerous scales, innermost 
of these narrow lanceolate, externally. villous,connivent, 
middlemost semifoliaccous squarrose, outermost perfect leaves 
and entirely patent. Florets discoid and fertile, an inch 
or more long, overtopping the calyx, orange-red, slender, 
smooth; tube three times longer than the limb; segments 
connivent, uprigbt, lanceolate-oval, involuted at the edge. 
Stigma protruded, simple, linear, splitinto a groove round 
the edge, as if of two equal laminz conjoined inwards at 
their disks. Seed turbinate, shining, white, with an in- 
tegument like a shell. 
A common hardy annual; but of which we have not 
found a coloured figure in any english work. The drawing 
was taken at Messrs. Whitley, Brame's, and Milne's nur- 
sery, King's Road, Fulham. 
— 
, 8A flower dissected vertically, showing the germens and florets stand- 
ing imbedded in the hair of the receptacle. â A detached floret. 
