CIMCIFUGA 



names have a sentiment beneath them and Traveller's 

 Joy is as fitting and appropriate to the plant of our 

 northern highways as to that which billows and 

 clambers along English lanes. 



CIMCIFUGA. BLACK SNAKEROOT 



Cimcifuga racemosa 



From cimex, a bug, and fugere, to drive away. 



Perennial. Native. A tall, slender, leafy-stemmed 

 plant, three to eight feet high, growing in shady and rocky 

 woods. Bears feathery white flowers in a long, compound, 

 terminal raceme. Maine, Ontario, and Wisconsin, south 

 to Georgia and Missouri. June-September. 



Root. — Thick, knotted. 



Stem. — Flowering stem, three to eight feet high, slen- 

 der, leafy, rising from a group of long-stemmed, thrice- 

 compounded, basal leaves. 



Leaves. — Alternate, compound first with three divisions 

 and each division pinnately cut, and the ultimate divisions 

 often again compound. Leaflets ovate or oblong, the 

 terminal one obovate, incisely toothed, cut, or divided. 



Flowers. — White, small, of fetid odor, crowded in com- 

 pound terminal racemes that vary from six to twenty- 

 four inches long. 



Calyx. — Of two to five petal-like sepals, falling early. 



Corolla. — Of four to eight, two-cleft, narrow petals. 



Stamens. — Many, with long filaments. 



Pistil. — Carpels one or two; stigmas broad. 



Fruit. — Follicles, oval, minutely beaked. 



These tall, white, flowering stems crowning a leafy 

 wand six to eight feet high and lighting up the shadowy 



6s 



