TANACETUM VULGARR, ORD. IE. Composite. 67 
THE root is perennial, long, creeping, and fibrous: the stem is 
strong, erect, often reddish, branched towards the top, smooth, 
beset with leaves, and rises two or three feet in height: the leaves 
are doubly pinnated; lesser pinnae, numerous, notched, or deeply | 
serrated; principal ribs edged with leafy clefts: the flowers are 
yellow, compound, and produced in a corymbus: the calyx consists 
of numerous small imbricated squamz, forming a common perian- 
thum of an hemispherical shape: the florets at the disc are herma- 
phrodite, tubular, divided at the mouth into five pointed segments: 
the florets at the border are female, and cut at the brim into three 
teeth: the filaments are five, very short, slender, and furnished 
with antherz, which unite and form a hollow cylinder: the germen 
in both the hermaphrodite and female florets is oblong, small, and 
supports a filiform style, furnished with a cloven refiexed stigma: 
the seeds are naked, solitary, and of an oblong shape: the receptacle 
is convex and naked. It is a native of England, growing in moist 
pastures, borders of corn fields, roads, and rivers, and flowering in 
July and August. 
This species, of which there is a variety, foliis crispis, the curled 
Tansy, which is said to be more grateful to the stomach than the 
common Tansy, and has therefore been preferred by some for 
medical purposes; but as the sensible qualities of the latter seem 
most powerful, we judge it to be most efficacious. 
* The leaves and flowers of Tansy have a strong, not very dis- 
agreeable smell, and a bitter somewhat aromatic taste: the flowers 
are stronger though rather less unpleasant than the leaves. They 
give out their virtue both to water and spirit, most perfectly to the 
latter: the tincture made from the leaves is of a fine green; from 
the flowers of a bright pale yellow colour. Distilled with water 
they yield a greenish-yellow essential oil, smelling strongly of the 
herb: the remaining decoction, inspissated, affords a strong bitter 
subsaline extract. The spirituous tinctures give over also, in 
distillation, a considerable part of their flavour; a part of it re- 
ae along with the bitter matter, in the extract.” 
* Lewis, M. M. p, 633. 
