202 COLTSFOOT. 



Description. — The root is perennial, very long, penetrating 

 deep into the earth, of a whitish colour, and sending out nume- 

 rous slender fibres, which creep horizontally. The scapes, 

 which appear before the leaves, are erect, simple, one-flowered, 

 slightly furrowed, downy, from six to ten inches in height, of a 

 pale green varying to a reddish tinge, and clothed with nume- 

 rous imbricated, lanceolate, acute scales. The leaves are all 

 radical, large, cordate, petiolate, slightly lobed and toothed, of a 

 bright green on the upper surface, whitish and cottony beneath. 

 The involucre consists of a simple row of linear equal scales, 

 erect at first, afterwards reflexed. The receptacle is naked, 

 flat, ultimately becoming convex. The florets of the circumfer- 

 ence are long, linear, numerous, and generally fertile ; those of 

 the disk are few in number, mostly barren, short, tubular, with a 

 limb divided into five acute, recurved segments. The anthers 

 are united into a tube. The germen is obovate, with a filiform 

 style, and two protruded linear stigmas. The fruit is oblong, 

 compressed, crowned with a simple sessile pappus, and contain- 

 ing a solitary erect seed without albumen. Plate 14, fig. 2, (a) 

 one of the female florets of the circumference ; (b) one of the 

 central hermaphrodite florets ; (c) the fruit *. 



The Coltsfoot is a native of Europe, from Italy to Sweden. It 

 o-rows in moist and clayey soils, in sterile and waste places, fal- 

 low fields, and the banks of rivers. It is the first plant that ve- 

 getates in marl or lime stone rubble, and in places where the 

 earth from canals, roads, &c., has been thrown up. " The clayey 

 part of the pestilential MareAmes of Tuscany, where scarcely 

 any other plant will grow, is covered with Coltsfoot. "f It flowers 

 in March and April, and produces its leaves in May. 



The generic name is derived from iussis, a cough, and ago, to 

 drive away, in allusion to the pectoral properties of the flowers, 

 and the term iSy^p^nv, by which it is mentioned by Dioscorides, 

 was formed from /3i)|, a cough. The specific name is an altera- 

 tion of Farfarus, applied by the Greeks to the white poplar, the 

 leaves of which bear some resemblance to the Coltsfoot. Some 

 of the ancient botanists designated this plant by the whimsical 

 name of fi/ius ante palrem, because the flowers appear before the 



* Conimojily called seed. 



I London's Encvolops'dia of Plants, p. 704. 



