64 THE BLOODROOT. 



cups to blister the skin, and become actively medicinal and 

 poisonous in Aconite and Hellebore. Their flowers are gen- 

 erally ornamental, of various styles of beauty in Clematis, 

 Adonis, Kanunculus, Anemone, Columbine, Larkspur, 

 Monk's-hood, and culminating in the splendid Pseony. 



The Record. Let the student now enter in the tablets 

 of the Plant Record, or such as he may himself prepare, the 

 analysis of the Anemonies. In doing it, the presence of the 

 plant itself is indispensable, together with the foregoing 

 instructions, and also a frequent reference to the Illustrated 

 Glossary. 



Scientific Terms (defined in XI and XII). Biternate. Compound 

 leaves. Cuneate. Generic. Leaflet. Palmate. Petiolule. Rays. 

 Rhizome. Specific. Ternate. Trifoliate. Triternate. Umbel. 



XIII. THE BLOODROOT. 



Description. Some sunny morning in Spring, in 

 woody vales along the banks of a purling brook, or the 

 track of a hidden streamlet, we may surprise in bloom the 

 bright, frail flowers of the Bloodroot. The plant is remark- 

 ably simple in its portrait, smooth and glaucous in surface. 



Analysis. The ffioot consists of fibers and fibrils only, 

 for we must consider that thick, fleshy body (rfi), although 

 underground, 



The Stem ; there is no other. It is a true rhizome Di- 

 rect-stock, growing horizontally, filled and reeking with a 

 blood-red, acrid, medicinal juice.* From its joints or off- 



* In lifting this plant from its bed. one is forcibly reminded of the sad experience 

 of ^Eneas at the grave of Polydore (JSneid, Book III). 



I pulled a plant with horror I relate 

 A prodigy so strange, and full of fate ! 

 The rooted fibers roso, and from the wound 

 Black bloody drops distilled upon the ground. 



