PHYTOLACCACEAL (POKEWEED FAMILY.) 385 
Order 85. PHYTOLACCACEiE. (Pokeweed Fam.) 
Plants with alternate entire leaves, and perfect flowers , 
with nearly the characters of Chenopodiaceae, hut usually a 
several-celled ovary composed of as many carpels united in 
a ring and forming a berry in fruit; — represented in the 
Northern States only by the typical genus 
1* PHYTOLACCA^ Tourn. Pokeweed. 
Calyx of 5 rounded and petal-like sepals. Stamens 5-30. 
Ovary of 5- 12 carpels, united in a ring, with as many short sep¬ 
arate styles, in fruit forming a depressed-globose 5 - 12-celled berry 
with a single vertical seed in each cell. Embryo curved in a ring 
around the albumen. — Tall and stout perennial herbs, with large 
petioled leaves, and flowers in racemes which, by the axillary 
prolongation of the stem, become lateral and opposite the leaves. 
(Name compounded of <£vroV, plant , and the French lac , lake, in 
allusion to the coloring matter resembling that pigment which the 
berries yield.) 
1. P. dccaildra, L. (Common Poke or Score. Garget.) 
Stamens 10: styles 10. — Road-sides and moist ground, common. 
July-Sept.—A smooth plant, with a rather unpleasant odor, and a 
very large poisonous root often 4'-6'in diameter, sending up stout 
stalks (in early spring sometimes eaten as a substitute for Aspara¬ 
gus), which are at length 6°-9° high. Calyx white : ovary green ; 
the long racemes of dark-purple berries filled with crimson juice, ripe 
in autumn. 
Order 86. POLYGONACEjE. (Buckwheat Family.) 
Herbs, with alternate leaves furnished with stipules in 
the form of sheaths (ochrese) above the swollen joints of the 
stem ; the flowers mostly perfect , with a more or less per¬ 
sistent calyx, a l-celled ovary bearing 2-3 styles or stig¬ 
mas, and a single erect orthotropous seed. Embryo curved 
or straightish, on the outside of the albumen, or rarely in its 
centre ; the radicle pointing from the hilum and towards the 
apex of the dry seed-like fruit. Stamens 4 - 12, inserted on 
the base of the 3 - 6-clefl calyx. Leaves usually entire. 
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