ORD. UMBELLATA. 
HERACLEUM GUMMIFERUM. GUM-BEARING HERACLEUM. 
Class Pentandria. Ord. Digynia. 
Nat. Ord. Umbellate, Linn. Umbelliferz, Juss. 
Gen. Char. Fruit elliptical, emarginate, compressed, striated, margined. 
Corolla unequal, inflexed, emarginate. Jnvolucre caducous. 
THE London and Edinburgh Colleges, on the authority of Willdenow, 
have admitted this plant into their Materia Medicas, as the one which affords 
the Gum ammoniacum of the shops ; but it is doubtful if it really be the in- 
dividual vegetable. Willdenow reared a plant from. seed, found in the 
ammoniacum of the shops, and named it Heracleum gummiferum, and 
although he could not obtain any of the gum-resin from it, he entertained 
no doubt of its being the plant which furnishes the drug.* Mr. Jackson, in 
* The root is tapering, a span in length, fleshy, whitish, and twice divided at the apex ; 
the stem rises three feet in height, is branched, erect, about an inch thick at the base, 
deeply furrowed, and sparingly furnished with hairs. The branches are opposite and 
divaricated ; the radical leaves a span in length, cordate, three-lobed, toothed, pubescent 
on the under side, and supported on roundish, channelled, furrowed petioles; the stem- 
leaves are opposite, somewhat cordate, three or four inches long, toothed, on petioles, the 
margin of the base of which is leafy, ventricose, and sheathing. The umbels are large 
and faany Foye composed of many-flowered, convex cuthelaciae ; the involucre is poly- 
phylious, with linear, lanceolate, deciduous leaflets; the involucels are of the same form 
as the involucre, but permanent. The marginal flowers are hermaphrodite and rayed ; 
the central hermaphrodite, without the germen : the margin of the calyx is obsolete. The 
