CHAPTER II 
WALL-RUE 
Belvisia ruta-muraria. 
Rootstock creeping, short, chaffy: scales minute, strongly 
striate-reticulate in blackish-brown, linear or linear-lanceolate, 
acuminate, entire or ciliate: leaves fascicled at end of rootstock: 
roots springing from bases of petioles, one to each petiole. 
Leaves evergreen. 
Petioles two to three inches long, usually as long as or longer 
than blades, more or less grooved on face, otherwise rounded or 
above faintly grooved on sides; at base deep brown or dark 
purple, slightly rigid, glandular, chaffless or bearing at base a 
few scales like those of rootstock; above green, herbaceous, 
glabrous, glands large, grayish, globose, unicellular: fibrovas- 
cular bundle solitary, flattened-cylindrical. 
Blades two-fifths of an inch to two and one-third inches long, 
ovate or ovate-deltoid, below bi-tri-pinnate, above once pinnate: 
pinne alternate, oblique to rachis, the compound stalked: ultimate 
divisions alternate, one-twelfth to two-fifths of an inch long, 
roundish-obovate to cuneate-rhomboid or cuneiform, at base 
entire, upper margin crenate or dentate or incised or in young 
plants undulate: rachises green, channelled on face: surfaces 
glabrous: color bluish-green or olive: texture coriaceous or sub- 
coriaceous. 
