PARSLEY*. 199 



Description. — The root is biennial, long, fusiform, whitish, 

 and beset with fibres. The stem is erect, round, striated, 

 furrowed, branched, and rises about two feet in height. The 

 leaves are petiolate, decompound, of a deep, shining green 

 colour; the lower composed of ovate-cuneate, trifid and toothed 

 pinnae ; the upper leaves sheathing at the base, with the leaf- 

 lets much less divided, the uppermost lanceolate or linear, en- 

 tire. The flowers are small, yellowish, and disposed in axillary 

 and terminal umbels of many rays, usually with an involucre of 

 one leaf at the base of the general umbel, and with six or eight 

 small subulate leaves at the base of the partial umbels. The 

 calyx is an obsolete margin. The corolla consists of five nearly 

 equal ovate petals with an inflexed point. The filaments are 

 five, spreading, slender, longer than the corolla, and tipped with 

 roundish anthers. The germen is ovate, striated, supporting 

 two short, diverging styles, terminated by obtuse stigmas. 

 The fruit is greenish or ash-coloured, ovate, compressed late- 

 rally, somewhat didymous, separable into two carpels or meri- 

 carps. (See Gen. Char.) Plate 35, fig. 4 ; (a) root ; (6) flower 

 magnified; (c) fruit, natural size ; (d) the same magnified; (e) 

 transverse section of the same. 



Common Parsley is a native of Sardinia, whence it was intro- 

 duced to England in 1548; also of Greece, Turkey, and the 

 Archipelago, and is so commonly cultivated in gardens as to be 

 naturalized in several places, though not included in the British 

 Flora. It flowers in June and July. 



The generic name is derived from the Greek irtrgoo-iXivov, com- 

 pounded of TTET^og, a rock, and o-eXivov, parsley, alluding to the 

 habitat. The Romans called this plant apium, a name which some 

 etymologists derive from apex, because the head of victors was 

 crowned with it, and others from apis, because bees are fond of it. 



Parsley was formerly included with celery in the genus 

 Apium; modern botanists, however, are almost universally 

 agreed upon making it a new genus, differing principally in the 

 petals being contracted into an oblong segment, in the ovate 

 and sub-didymous fruit, and the presence of involucres. The 

 only British species is the Corn Parsley, (P. segetum, Koch. ; 

 Sison segetum, Lin.,) having pinnate, radical leaves, the leaflets 

 lobed, cut, and serrated ; upper leaves with linear, imperfect 



