THALICTRUM ANEMONOIDES. 



WIND-FLOWER MEADOW-RUE. 



NATURAL ORDER, RANUN'CULACE.E. 



Thalictrum ANEMONOIDES, Michaux. — Glabrous; stem and slender petiole of the radical 

 leaf (a span high) rising from a cluster of thickened, tuberous roots; the latter (/.<•., the 

 radical leaf) two to three-ternately compound ; leaflets roundish, somewhat three-lol)ed at 

 the end, cordate at the JDase, long-petiolulate, those of the two to three-leaved, one to two- 

 ternatc involucre similar ; flowers several in an umbel ; sepals oval (one half inch long, 

 rarely pinkish), not early deciduous. Rarely the sepals are three-lobed, like the leaflets. 

 (Gray's il/(/««rt/ of the Botany of the Northern United States. See also Chapman's //oni 

 of the Southern United States, and (under Anemone thalictroidcs) Wood's Class-Book of 

 Botany.) 



N Shakespeare's amusing " Comedy of Errors " the inter- 

 est centres on a pair of twin brothers, both named 

 Antipholus, and just like one another, but each unaware of 

 the other's existence. One of the twins resides at Ephesus, 

 and the other at Syracuse ; and the most comic mistakes natu- 

 rally occur as they cross each other's path. The fun is still 

 further augmented by another pair of twins, both named 

 Dromio, both also exactly alike, each also unaware of the 

 other's existence, and one a servant to the Syracusan Anti- 

 pholus, while the other holds the same relation to him of 

 Ephesus. 



The Thalicti^iim anemonoidcs, to which our present cliapter is 

 devoted, and the Anemone ncmorosa or Wind-Fk^wer, might do 

 as twin brothers in some floral " Comedy of Errors " ; for it is 

 not easy to tell, at a first glance, which of the two is the 

 Ephesian and which the Syracusan, or, rather, wliich of tliem 

 belonirs to the oenus Thalictrum and which to that of Anemone. 

 Our Tkalictyum anemonoides flowers in spring at the same time 



