Minnesota Plant Life. 



337 



ranged in pinnate groups, are developed in such manner as to 

 form one large three-branched leaf, of which there are several 

 upon the branching stem. The flowers are arranged in the 

 kinds of clusters known as umbels, characteristic also of the 

 parsley family. In the spikenard the umbels are massed to- 

 gether into a large panicled inflorescence. The fruits, forming 

 very large and ornamental bunches when ripe, are of a red- 

 purple color, globular in shape and not edible. 



The wild sarsaparilla is not furnished with an erect, branch- 

 ing stem, but the leaves and flowering axes arise from a long, 

 underground rootstock. The flowers are produced at the apex 

 of the flowering axis in a 

 group consisting usually of 

 three umbels, arranged so as 

 to form a flat-topped cluster. 

 The fruit is purplish-black, 

 nearly spherical, and long- 

 itudinally grooved. The 

 wild elder has leaves like 

 those of the elder bush. 

 The umbels are numerous 

 and simple, aggregated to- 

 gether in groups towards 

 the end of the leafy, erect 

 stem, and the fruits are dark 

 purple, five-grooved when FlG " 1( 



dry. The whole plant is more or less beset with slender bristles. 

 The two varieties of ginseng may be distinguished by their 

 leaves. In the true ginseng the leaves are made up of five 

 stalked leaflets, while the leaflets in the dwarf ginseng are ses- 

 sile and vary from three to five in number. In both plants the 

 leaves are arranged palmately, and in each there is a swollen 

 root almost globular in the dwarf ginseng, and ovoid-tuberous 

 and sometimes branched in the true ginseng. The dwarf gin- 

 seng rarely exceeds six inches in height, but the true ginseng 

 may reach the height of a foot and a half. The flowers and 

 fruits are arranged in small umbels. In the true ginseng the 

 fruit is crimson, while in the dwarf ginseng it is yellow. Gin- 

 seng roots are commercially valuable on account of the use 

 which the Chinese make of the plant in their pharmacopoeia. 

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