STUDIES OF PLANT LIFE 



various manufactures. With it they dye the porcupine 

 quills and moose-hair both red and orange, and also stain 

 the baskets of a better sort that they offer for sale in the 

 stores. Nor is this the only use to which it is applied: 

 they use the juice both externally in curing cutaneous 

 eruptions of the skin, and internally in other diseases. 

 Latterly its medicinal qualities have been acknowledged by 

 the American Eclectic School of Pharmacy as valuable in 

 many forms of disease, so that we find our beautiful plant 

 to be both useful and ornamental. 



The Blood-root grows in large beds; each knob of the 

 root sends up one leaf and its accompanying flower bud, 

 which it kindly enfolds as if to protect the fair, frail 

 blossom from the chilling winds and showers of hail and 

 sleet. The leaf is of a grayish or bluish green; at first the 

 underside, which is the part exposed to view, is salmon 

 colored veined with red, but as it expands and enlarges the 

 outer surface darkens into deeper green. The blossom is 

 composed of many petals, varying from eight to twelve.* 

 The many stamens are of a bright orange yellow. The 

 stigma is two-lobed, and the style short or sessile. The 

 seed is contained in an oblong pod of two valves. The 

 seeds are of a bright red brown color. The ivory white 

 petals are oblong, blunt, or sometimes pointed; the outer 

 ones larger than the inner, at first concave, but opening 

 out as the flower matures. Under cultivation the blossom 

 of the Blood-root increases in size, but the plant does not 



*Very rarely more than eight. It might be called an Easter flower. The two sepals fall 

 off as the flower opens ; owing to this fact few know there were any. The flower 

 is composed of four large petals on the outside and four smaller ones inside, both form- 

 ing, when separated, a perfect St. Andrew's Cross. I never saw this noticed by anyone 

 but myself. It is so fragile a plant that it is often hard to get a perfect flower, as the 

 petals drop when it is being plucked. A.D.C. 



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