Kobelia cardinalis. 179 
PHARM. 
LoBELI® cardinalis, Radix. 
Few native plants equal in beauty this gaudy flower. Indeed, it 
is far more showy and elegant than a multitude of exotics so indus- 
triously cultivated. Wherever seen, it is greatly admired, and per- 
haps it only requirés to be generally known, in order to obtain a 
high station in the catalogue of favourite plants. 
It is a native of all our marshes and meadows, from one end of 
the union to the other; and in the autumn, the season of its flower- 
ing, it decorates them with its beautiful, long-blooming carmine 
flowers, forming a gorgeous contrast with the showy blue flowers of 
its congener, the L. siphilitica. Pursh describes a white variety. 
The root resembles that of many species of the genus, as the in- 
flata, siphilitica, Claytoniana, &c. It is perennial, whitish-yellow, 
fibrous, of a nauseous pungent taste, affecting the fauces in a manner 
similar to that of the inflata, producing a taste resembling that of 
tobacco. The stem is erect, pubescent, simple, from two to four feet 
high, terminating in a long spike of brilliant carmine-coloured 
flowers, those towards the top coming into bloom successively after 
the lower ones have decayed, so that the plant continues a long time 
in flower. The leaves are broad-lanceolate, of a fine shining green, 
