€HELIDONIUM MAJus, ORD. XXI. Rhoeades. 389 
Polyandria Monogynia. Lin. Gen. Plant. 647. 
Gen. Ch. Cor. 4-petala. Cu. 2-phyllus. Siliqua 1-locularis, linearis. 
Sp. Ch. C. pedunculis umbellatis. 
ROOT perennial, tapering, branched, externally brown, inter- 
nally yellow. Stalks erect, evlindrical, branched, somewhat hairy, 
from one to two feet in height. Leaves pinnated, terminal leafit 
large, and often lobed; pinne roundish, with deeply scolloped 
edges. Flowers yellow, in small umbels, upon long hairy foot- 
stalks. Calyx consisting of two ovate, entire, hairy, deciduous 
leaves. Corolla of four petals, which are circular, large, spread- 
ing, narrow at the base. Filaments from twenty to thirty, com- 
pressed, tapering, shorter than the corolla. Anthere double, 
oblong, flattish. Geérmen cylindrical, long, bent. Stigma blunt. 
Pod long, valved, somewhat tapering at each end, containing 
several oval shining seeds attached to the receptacle, which is 
placed at the junction of the valves. 
It grows in hedges, or rough uncultivated places, flowering in 
most of the summer months. 
« The leaves and roots of Celandine have a faint unpleasant 
smell, and a bitterish very acrid and very durable taste, which is 
considerably stronger in the roots than in the leaves. Both water 
and rectified spirit extract nearly the whole of their pungent 
matter: the leaves, notwithstanding the yellow juice which issues 
so plentifully from a slight wound, and in which their activity 
seems to reside, give to rectified spirit a green tincture: the roots, 
which yield a copious safiron red juice, tinge the same menstruum 
of a brownish yellow.” ; 
« The pungency of this, plant is not of the volatile kind, little 
or nothing of it rising in distillation with water any more than 
with spirit: it is nevertheless greatly abated by drying the plant 
itself, or by inspissating with a gentle heat the spirituous or watery 
_ infusions,”* 
* Lewis. l. c. 
No. 33.—vo1. 3. 5 
