GEUM TRIFLORUM. 



THREE-FLOWERED AVENS. 



NATURAL ORDER, ROSACEA. 



Geum triflorum, Pursh. — Villous ; stem erect, about three-flowered ; leaves mostly radical, 

 interruptedly pinnate, of numerous cuneate, incisely dentate, subequal leaflets ; bractlets 

 linear, longer than the sepals ; styles plumose, very long in fruit ; stems scarcely a foot 

 high, with a pair of opposite laciniate leaves near the middle, and several bracts at the 

 base of the long, slender peduncles. (Wood's Class-Book of Botany. See also Gray's 

 Manual; Torrey and Gray's Flora of the United States; Watson's Botany cf Clarence 

 King's Expedition; and the Botany of the California Geological Survey.) 



Y old English botanists the plants we now know as Geum 

 were called " Avens." An old author, writing before the 

 time of Linnaeus, says, " The Avens, for all that we can learn, 

 was unknown to the Greeks, and therefore we can furnish you 

 with no Greek name for it, but it is called in Latin Caryophyllata, 

 from the roots smelling like cloves. It is, however, supposed to 

 be the Geum referred to by Pliny, the Roman writer, in his 

 History." The name Geum, however, is from the Greek geuo, 

 and signifies " a good taste," referring to the taste of the roots, 

 as alluded to by the writer aforesaid. All the members of 

 this family have more or less of this aromatic character, and 

 some of the species are used as tea where mild tonics are useful. 

 Our pretty species is found only in the extreme northeast 

 of the Atlantic United States, but takes a more southerly range 

 as it goes westward. It is found in Colorado, in the Rocky 

 Mountains, in the mountains of Utah, in the Sierra Nevada, 

 and most of the high regions of the Pacific Coast. It was first 

 found by the American botanist Pursh, who named it G. triflorum, 

 from its almost always having but three flowers on a stem, as 



