APIACEjE OR UMBELLIFERiE. 



foliage, stalks, and even the flowers, are all of a bright green. Leaves 

 2 or 3 feet wide, biternate, or somewhat bipinnate, very smooth ; 

 leaflets ovate-lanceolate, acute, cut, sharply and closely serrated, 

 partly decurrent, the odd one deeply 3dobed. Footstalks at the base 

 excessively dilated and tumid, pale and rather membranous, with many 

 ribs. Umbels, both general and partial, nearly globose, the rays of 

 both very numerous, spreading, nearly smooth. General bracts few, 

 linear, deciduous, often wanting; partial about 8, linear-lanceolate, 

 short ; occasionally enlarged, leafy and notched. Fruit 3§ lines 

 long, pale clay colour, oblong, with the ridges sharp, thin, elevated, 

 and rather hard, the dorsal ones approximated and forming rounded 

 channels between them. — Root fragrant, bitterish, pungent, sweet 

 when first tasted, but leaving a glowing heat in the mouth. " The 

 Laplanders extol it not only as food but medicine. In coughs, hoarse- 

 ness, and other pectoral disorders they eat the stalks roasted in hot 

 ashes ; they also boil the tender flowers in milk till it attains the con- 

 sistence of an extract which they use to promote perspiration in 

 catarrhal fevers and to strengthen the stomach and bowels in diarrhoea. 

 The leaves seeds and roots are certainly good aromatic tonics. S. and C. 



OPOPONAX. 



Calyx obsolete. Petals roundish entire rolled inwards, with 

 a rather acute lobe. Disk broad and thick. Styles very short. 

 Fruit flattened at the back, with a dilated convex border. Half- 

 fruits with 3 very fine dorsal ridges, and no distinct lateral ones. 

 Vittae 3 to each channel, 6-10 to the commissure. — A peren- 

 nial, with a thick root, and a rough stem. Leaves bipinnate r, 

 segments unequally cordate, crenated, obtuse. Umbels com- 

 pound. Involucre both universal and partial, few-leaved. 

 Flowers yellow. 



96. O. chironum Koch amb. 96. DC.prodr. iv. 170. N. and E. 

 handb. iii. 56. — Pastinaca Opoponax Linn. sp. 376. Waldst. 

 and Kit. iii. t. 21 1 . Fl. Gr. t. 288. Woodv. t. 1 1 3. S. and C. 

 ii. t. 98. Ferula Opoponax Rom. and Sch. syst. vi. 597. 

 na.va.KEi; ypaicXhov, Dioscorid. — Dry hills, margins of fields, 

 thickets upon the coast in the south of Europe and Asia Minor. 



A plant 6 or 7 feet high, resembling a parsnip, of a dull yellowish 

 green colour. Stem strongly furrowed. Leaves from 1 to 2 feet long 

 and more, flat, regularly bipinnate, with ovate-cordate leaflets, which 

 are usually oblique at the base, often confluent, and surrounded with a 

 cartilaginous crenated border; the petioles hispid. Umbels proliferous, 

 of a small number of long slender rays, and with several firm ovate-oblong, 

 undivided bracts; partial umbels spreading, with no involucre or only 

 the rudiments of one. Flowers yellow. Calyx inconspicuous. Styles 

 rather short and stout. Fruit 4 lines long, oblong, flat, with a pale 

 thickened border ; dorsal ridges filiform, but little raised, much paler 

 than the dull brown broad flat distinctly vittated channels; commissure 

 dull brown, with a closed elevated filiform raphe. — A milky juice 

 exudes from the root when wounded, and hardens into opoponax, a fetid 

 gum resin similar in its effects to assafcetida. 



44 



