SILPHIUM LACINIATUM. 

 COMPASS PLANT. 



NATURAL ORDER, COMPOSIT.E. 



SiLPHlUM LACINIATUM, LiiincEus. — Rough-bristly throughout ; stem stout (three to six feet 

 high), leafy to the top; leaves pinnately parted, petioled, but dilated and clasping at the 

 base ; their divisions lanceolate or linear, acute, cut-Iobed or pinnatifid, rarely entire ; 

 heads few (one to two inches broad), somewhat racemed ; scales of the involucre acute, 

 tapering into long and rigid points; achenia broadly winged and deeply notched. (Gray's 

 Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States. See also Chapman's Flora of the 

 Southern United States, and Wood's Class- Book of Botany.^ 



HE Species now illustrated is a very strong growing- plant, 

 often reaching a height of six feet. To get it within the 

 limits of our plate, sections of its most characteristic portions 

 have had to be made, but these are quite sufficient to enable 

 the student to recognize the plant. This is, of course, satis- 

 factory to the botanist, but will scarcely enable the lover of beauty 

 to form an idea of the character of the plant. As it appears in 

 the illustration it is coarse and heavy, and in a lesson in cesthet- 

 ics might do perhaps to teach the student what to avoid. But 

 it is for all this a plant well worthy of our acquaintance, for its 

 botanical name carries us back a long way into ancient historv, 

 while there is so much of its own to attract attention, that it is 

 doubtful whether any plant would do more honor to the selection 

 we have to make among the "Native Flowers and Ferns" for 

 our work. 



Silphiou is the name applied by Dioscorides, the ancient Greek 

 physician, to a gum-bearing plant, or rather plants ; for Bauhin 

 tells us there were two kinds — " the asa-fostida and the asa-dul- 



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