APIACEJE OR UMBELLIFBR^;. 



compound. Umbels numerous. Both involucres many-leaved. 

 Flowers yellow. 



122. C. odontalgica Pall. itin. ed. gall, in 8vo. app. n. 309. t. 78. 

 f. i. DC. prodr. iv. 236. Fee cours. ii. 208. The driest 

 deserts of Siberia, the Crimea and Caucasus. 



Leaves decompound, hoary ; segments linear, hoary, somewhat 

 trifid. Stem naked. Both involucres with a few undivided bracts. 

 Fruit oblong rather compressed from the back, scarcely furrowed. 

 The root excites salivation, and is said to cure pain in the teeth. 



PRANGOS. 



Calyx a 5-toothed rim. Petals ovate, entire, involute at the 

 point. Disk depressed, scarcely visible in the fruit. Fruit 

 nearly taper with a broad commissure. Mericarps compressed 

 at the back, with 5 smooth ridges, thick at the base, ending in 

 vertical membranous wings. Seed covered with numerous vittae. 

 Perennial herbaceous plants. Stem taper. Leaves decom- 

 pound, with linear segments. Umbels numerous. Flowers 

 yellow. 



123. P. pabularia Lindl. in Journ. ray. inst. 1825. p. 7. DC. 

 prodr. iv. 239. Fiturasulioon Indian Bazaars according to 

 Professor Royle. North of India near Draz, on the northern 

 face of mountains. 



Root woody, perennial, with numerous clustered crowns, covered 

 over by the coarse fibrous bases of the leaves. Leaves supra-decom- 

 pound, smooth, with linear entire or 3-parted segments ; petioles 

 crisp at the edge near the base. Flowers unisexual. Male umbels 

 compound, shorter than the leaves to which they are axillary; involu- 

 cres both general and partial, with membranous ovate-acuminate 

 bracts. Calyx distinctly 5-toothed. Fruit compressed at the side, 

 8-9 lines long, crowned with recurved styles, and with the corky 

 teeth of the permanent calyx. Half-fruits corky, with 5 large primary 

 ridges, of which the dorsal are produced into a wavy wing, and coarsely 

 tuberculated at the sides ; commissure narrower than the half-fruit. 

 Seed covered with indefinite colourless vittae, both on the back and 

 commissure. Leaves dried, and eaten by cattle as winter fodder ; its 

 effects heating, producing fatness quickty, destructive of the Fasciola 

 hepatica in sheep. Moorcroft. 



I introduce this plant for the following reason : Professor Royle 

 suggests that this was one of the kinds of Sylphion of the Greeks : 

 that described by Arrian as growing only with pines on Paropamisus, 

 where it was browsed on by numerous flocks of sheep and cattle. 

 " Lieut. Burnes, crossing in the direction of Alexander's route, found 

 this in the same situation, greedily cropped' by sheep and even eaten by 

 his fellow-travellers (as is also mentioned by Kinnier); and he sup- 

 poses it to be the Silphium of Alexander's historians." Heeren applies 

 the greater portion of the remarks that remain of Ctesias respecting the 

 Indians, to the high land of Tartary, where grew the Silphium grazed on 

 by innumerable flocks of sheep and goats. Royle 's I/lustrations, p. 230. 



56 



