MEDEOLA VIRGINICA. 



INDIAN CUCUMBER. 



NATURAL ORDER, TRILLIACE/E. 



Medeoi.a Virginica, Gronovius. — Sepals and petals nearly alike, lance-oblong, revolute, 

 deciduous ; anthers linear-oblong, incumbent ; styles long, linear, recurved, diverging, 

 stigmatic on the upper side, dark purple, deciduous ; berry globose, dark purple, three- 

 celled, few-seeded ; rhizome oblong, fleshy, white ; stem simple, slender, loosely floccose- 

 pubescent, with a verticil of five to nine leaves near the middle, and another of three at 

 the summit ; flowers pale greenish yellow, sub-umbellate, nodding ; pedicels erect in fruit. 

 (Darlington's Flora Ccslrica. See also Wood's CInss-Book of Botany, Gray's Manual of 

 the Botany of the A'ortheni United States, and Chapman's Flora of the Southern United 

 States.) 



HE commentators tell us that the Mcdcola was so named 

 from Medea, the sorceress, because the plant is, or was, 

 supposed to possess great medicinal virtues ; but from all we 

 can learn, it does not appear that any one ever said or thought 

 it had any of these virtues. The name was first given to our 

 species by Gronovius, and is generally dated from its adoption 

 in LinncEus' "Genera Plantarum," published in 1737. It is very 

 likely that it was suggested, as was Andromeda to Linnceus, 

 by a similarity between some phase in the life of the j^lant and 

 some one of the incidents narrated by Ovid in his story of 

 Medea. Of the latter it is said that she was a wicked sorceress; 

 but in truth, she had much to provoke her. The daughter of a 

 king, and the victim of a tender jDassion for the enemy of her 

 father and her countrymen, it was but natural that she should 

 make use of her magical powers for the purpose of aiding the 

 man she loved ; nor is it difficult to understand why her fiery 

 temper should have been roused, when, after she had helped the 



