NAT. ORDER. 



Composite^. 



SILPHIUM TEREBINTHAOEUM. STATELY SILPHIUM. 



Class XIX. Syngenesia. Order IV. Polyga.mia-Necessaria. 



Gen. Cluir. Caly.v, common, ovate. Scales, ovate-oblong-. Corolla, 

 compound. Stamens, hermaphrodite. Filaments, five, capillary, 

 very short. 



Spe. Char. Anthers, cylindrical, tubular. Germen, round, slender. 

 Style, filiform, very long, villose. Stigma, simple. 



This is a perennial plant; stem herbaceous, four to six feet in 

 height, glabrous, striated, branched, erect ; lower leaves ample, some 

 of them a foot long, cordate, coriaceous, acute, smooth above, beneath 

 and at the margin beset with numerous short bristles, each seated on 

 a smell white callous point ; ^7C//o/e very long, sometimes measuring a 

 foot or a foot and a half, below dilated into a sheathing base ; the 

 leaves gradually become smaller and nan-ower and less stalked up- 

 wards, and among the flower-stalks they pass into bracteas about an 

 inch long, often spreading, and with their margins involute ; flowers 

 paniculate, large, handsome, yellow; involucre globose, of several 

 roundish, green, closely imbricated, glabrous scales, inermost ones 

 smaller and longer ; corolla of the ray numerous, ligulate, entire at the 

 apex, each bearing a pistil : segments of the style long, filiform ; florets 

 of the disk each subtended by a blunt, linear-oblong scale ; corolla 

 yellow ; anthers protruded, dark brown ; stifle linear, filiform, entire ; 

 germen cylindrical, slightly downy, abortive. 



This is a fine and elegant species of Silphium, to which the spe- 

 cific name seems to be applied on account of a terebinthine gum. 



Vol. IV.— 170. 



