BUTTERBUR 



103 



smooth, reddish, covered with a felt at the base, downy beneath, and 

 very large. The leaf-stalks are long, round, finely -furrowed, sheathed 

 below, channelled, and purple. They are usually softly and loosely hairy. 



The plant is dioecious, with male florets and female on different 

 plants, the male florets being rarest, and in a dense egg-shaped 

 panicle, the female ones loose and longer, the styles of the first being 

 egg-shaped and stout, the 

 female with the mouth 

 obliquely blunt above. 

 The flowerheads are 

 carried on erect, stout 

 scapes, white and woolly, 

 with lance-shapecl scales, 

 purple and ribbed. 



The plant is often 

 several feet high, the 

 flowering being about 

 i ft. The flowers bloom 

 in March and April. The 

 plant is a herbaceous per- 

 ennial propagated by 

 division. 



In Petasites albus the 

 plant is dioecious, and the 

 male flowerheads are more 

 conspicuous. In the fe- 

 male capitula there are 



tWO kinds Of florets. Only BUTTERBUR (Petasites officinalis, Moi-nch) 



some in the centre pro- 

 duce honey, and the stamens (usually absent) and pistil (with stigma 

 with short hairs) are functionless, and around these are tubular female 

 florets without honey or stamens. The male flowerheads are loose 

 and of one sort of floret only, and possess honey, and a pistil with 

 no stigma, but a style whose branches sweep the pollen out from the 

 cylinder by means of the hairs, but they possess no papillae. The 

 male capitula, with florets which are tubular below and bell -shaped 

 above, also possess some functionless florets occupying the same place 

 as the pistillate florets in the female flowerheads, which they resemble 

 in not possessing a nectary or stamens, and in having a style and 

 a narrow tubular corolla. There are also abortive female florets which, 

 in reduced number and functionless condition, correspond in primitive 



