338 



Minnesota Plant Life. 



By American or European physicians the plant is not consid- 

 ered to be of any medical value whatever. 



The parsley family. The parsley family in Minnesota in- 

 cludes about thirty-five species of herbs, very difficult to dis- 

 criminate without a technical examination of their peculiari- 

 ties. In all of them the flowers are produced in compound 

 or simple umbels, with the exception of the curious button- 

 snakeroot, which resembles in its appearance a one seed-leafed 

 plant much more than it does the other members of the pars- 

 ley family. In this the leaves are parallel-veined and grass- 

 like and the flowers are clustered in heads. Among the varie- 

 ties of parsley found in 

 Minnesota are two sorts 

 of pennyworts, two sorts 

 of black snake-roots, the 

 cow-parsnip, the hog- 

 fennel, the cowbane, the 

 w a t e r-h e m 1 o c k , the 

 meadow-parsnips and wa- 

 ter-parsnips, the hone- 

 worts, poison-hemlocks 

 and the sweet cicelys. 



The plants have in this 

 family, for the most part, 

 compound leaves, but in 

 a few species the leaves 

 are simple, as in the button-snakeroots, the introduced hare's- 

 ear, the Zizias, and the pennyworts. In most of the forms the 

 leaves are compounded like those of the well-known water- 

 parsnips or wild parsnips. In all the varieties the fruit is dry 

 and consists of two carpels, which are at first united but finally 

 separate from each other along their faces, so as to produce two 

 half-fruits, in each of which a single seed is inclosed. There 

 are usually oil-tubes in the fruit, so that the odor of caraway 

 seeds is a peculiarity of most of the fruits in the family. It is 

 upon the characters of the mature fruit that the specific descrip- 

 tions are based, rather than upon those of the flower or of the 

 vegetative tract ; for the flowers, and to some extent the plant- 

 bodies, are very similar throughout great numbers of species 

 and genera. 



FIG. 164. Water-parsnip. After Britton and Brown. 



