150 ORD. VI. Hederaceew.  PANAX QuINQUEFOLIUM. 
round, and almost erect: the flowers are white, produced ina 
roundish terminal umbel, and are hermaphrodite or male on 
separate plants: the former, which we have figured, stand im close 
simple-umbels: the involucrum consists of several small, tapering, 
pointed, permanent leaves; the proper calyx is tubular, and 
divided at the rim into five small teeth: the corolfa consists of five 
petals, which are small, oval, equal, and reflexed: the: filaments 
are five, short, and furnished with simple anther: the germen is 
roundish, placed below the corolla, and supports two short erect 
styles, crowned by simple stigmata: the fruit is an umbilicated 
two-celled berry, each containing a single irregularly heart-shaped 
seed, The flowers appear in June. 
Ginseng was formerly supposed to grow only in Chinese Tartary, ° 
affecting mountainous situations, shaded by close woods; but it 
has now been long known that this plant is also a native of North 
America, whence M. Sarrasin transmitted specimens of it to Paris 
in the year 1704;° and the Ginseng since discovered in Canada, 
Pensylvania, and Virginia, by Lafiteau,“ Kalm,* Bartram,’ and 
— has been found to Bees vege with the Tartarian 
Bape om 
which are known to undergo a certain preparation, whereby. they 
assume an appearance somewhat different. For it is said that in 
China the roots are washed and soaked in a decoction of rice, or 
millet-seed, and afterwards exposed to the steam of the liquor, 
by which they acquire a greater firmness and clearness than in 
their natural state.* The plant was first introduced into England 
in 1740 by that industrious naturalist Peter Collinson,‘ and our 
* Sarrasin was correspondent of the Royal Academy of Sciences, in the history 
of which his account was published in 1718. See p. 44. 
*L.c. * Rosa til N. America, t. iii. p. 334. * Comm, Nor. 1741. p. 361. 
* The Chinese value these roots in some measure according to their figure, 
esteeming those very highly which are regularly forked, or havea fancied resem- 
blance to the human form. 
See Hort. Kew, 
