ARACKffi. 



Bigelow med. hot. i. t. 4. Mart, amcen. bonn. 16. f. 11. Swamps 

 and damp shady woods in North America. (Dragon root, or 

 Indian turnip.) 



Rhizoma round, flattened, its upper part tunicated like the onion, its 

 lower and larger portion tuberous and fleshy, giving off numerous long 

 white radicles in a circle from its upper edge; covered on the under 

 side with a dark, loose, wrinkled skin. Leaves usually one or two on 

 long sheathing footstalks, ternate; the leaflets oval, mostly entire, 

 acuminate, smooth, paler on the under side, and becoming glaucous as 

 the plant grows older, the two lateral ones somewhat rhomboidal. 

 Scape erect, round, green or variegated with purple, invested at base 

 by the petioles, and their acute sheaths. Spathe large, ovate, acumi- 

 nate, convoluted into a tube at bottom, but flattened and bent over at 

 the top, like a hood, internally various in colour, in some wholly green, 

 in others dark purple or black, in most variegated, with pale greenish 

 stripes on a dark ground. Spadix much shorter than the spathe, clilb- 

 shaped, rounded at the end, green, purple, black, or variegated, suddenly 

 contracted into a narrow neck at base, and surrounded below by the 

 stamens or ovaries. In the barren plants, its base is covered with 

 conical, fleshy filaments, each bearing from 2 to 4 circular anthers. In 

 the fertile plants, it is invested with roundish crowded ovaries 

 each tipped with a stigma. Plants which are perfectly monoecious, and 

 which are the least common, have stamens below the ovaries. The upper 

 part of the spadix withers with the spathe, while the ovaries grow into 

 a large compact bunch of shining scarlet berries. Violently acrid and 

 almost caustic j the rhizoma when fresh is too powerful to render its 

 internal exhibition safe. The acrid property extremely volatile ; easily 

 driven off by heat, when the rhizoma yields one-fourth of pure delicate 

 amylaceous matter, resembling the finest arrow root, " very white, 

 delicate and nutritive." 



COLOCASIA. 



Spathe tubular, permanent, straight or cucullate. Spadix 

 naked at the point, 5 at the base, $ at the apex, with rudi- 

 mentary processes between. Anthers connate. Ovary 1-celled. 

 Stigma capitate, not glutinous. 



1282. C. esculenta Schott. meletem. 18. Arum esculentum 

 Linn.sp.pl. 1369. Caladium esculentum Vent. Willd. sp.pl. 

 iv. 489. (Rumph. v. t. 110. f. 1. Sloane i. t. 106. f. 1.) 

 Hotter parts of the world in both hemispheres. (Cocoa roots, 

 Eddoes, &c.) 



Stemless. Leaves peltate, cordate, ovate, entire, glaucous, green. 

 Spadix shorter than the ovate-lanceolate spathe. The tubers and 

 leaves are a common article of food among negroes, but they are so 

 acrid as to prove uneatable by Europeans not accustomed to them. 

 The boiled leaves produce a most inconvenient flow of saliva, and a 

 sense of choking, as I have experienced. 



TYPHONIUM. 



Spathe convolute at base. Spadix naked at the end ; inter- 

 ruptedly unisexual at the base. Rudimentary organs between 



602 



