76 ■ Botanical Society of Edinburgh : — 



In Kumaon the plant occurs on the o])en sunny downs, at from 

 1 1,500 to 14,000 feet above the sea-level, where all arboreous vegeta- 

 tion has ceased. It is well known to the mountaineers by the name 

 of Roogee. They eat the pounded root as a condiment ; it has, like 

 the whole plant, a strong permanent odour and flavour, something like 

 horse-radish. The localities in which it grows are — 1. Champwa, 

 near the Kaphini glacier; 2. near the Sooudurdhoongee glacier, the 

 heads of the Pindar River ; and 3, at Ralim, on one of the spurs of 

 the snowy Panch — Choola Range, which bounds the next great valley 

 to the east. Here the Roogee flowers in JNIay — June, and ripens its 

 fruit in September — October. The root is fusiform, a foot or more 

 in girth at the collar, and from 1 to 2 feet long, forked below ; 

 internally of light cellular substance, externally exhibiting very 

 numerous horizontal annular ridges. Several annual stems from 

 4 to G feet high. When young in winter protected by many erect, 

 rectangular, straws-like scales. Radical leaves spreading, from 2 to 

 2^ feet long, the exterior half occupied by 7 or 8 distant, distinct, 

 subopposite or alternate pinnae ; petiole dilated at the base ; cauline 

 leaves scattered, erect, pinnato-pinnatifid, about a foot long, with 

 10 to 12 segments, linear-lanceolate, acuminate, incised, the lower 

 ones more or less separate, terminal more confluent. Flowers in 

 dense terminal and axillaiy leafy corymbs, shorter than the leaves ; 

 small, white or yellowish-white, v^ith a sweet fragrance or strong 

 odour of horse-radish (according to taste), and much frequented by 

 bees, flies, &c. Peduncles and pedicels villous, the latter long and 

 one-flowered. Sepals 4, oblong, obtuse, coloured, from l-5th to 

 l-4th inch long ; petals alternate, oval, veined, half the height of the 

 sepals; stamens 12 to 1.5, hypogynous, erect, as long as the calyx, 

 and disposed in 2 or 4 sets. Ovary one, flat, obcordate, resembling 

 the silicle of CcqiseUa Bursa-Pastoris, with 2 auriculate, 1 -seeded 

 cells ; stigmas 2, on a very short style. The silicle is about If inch 

 by l\, one of the cells being abortive." 



gonum Pallasii. This, like the Megacarpaa, abounds in the Caspiaii province, 

 and equally, or much more, in the sandy deserts of Western India, between 

 the Jumna and the Indus rivers. The heat for many months annuallv is 

 extreme, and one is at first surprised to find a plant flourishing here, which 

 is also indigenous to the steppes of the Caspian, where the winter cold is 

 equally extreme. But, as is now well known, the Caspian and its deserts 

 occupy a deep hollow at the western end of a plain descending from the 

 sources of the Oxus and Jaxartes, and, as a consequence of this low position 

 on the earth's surface, possess a summer temi)erature as high as the winter 

 one is low, and perhaps equal to that of the Iiulian desert above referred 

 to. In the latter, uiu-ing the months of April, May and June, when every- 

 thing else is burnt up, the CalUgonum, with its innumerable green leafless 

 twigs, covers the waste of sand-hills with a mantle of verdure, yielding a 

 favourite food to the camel, the proper beast of burden of the country. It 

 is known to the people by tiie name of P/iuke, and under this designation 

 is first mentioned by Mr. El})hinstone in his account of the kingdom of 

 Caubnl. A species of Ephedra likewise occurs, which is also called by the 

 same name ; but the true plant is the CalUgonum, and neither Ephedra nor 

 Asclepias acida (the Soma plant) as some have supposed. 



