WATER-DROPWORT. 395 



exuding an acrid, foetid, yellow juice. The stem is erect, strong, 

 cylindrical, furrowed, hollow, smooth, tinged with yellowish 

 red, much branched, (when wounded, exuding, like the root, a 

 yellowish juice,) and attaining the height of three to five feet. 

 The leaves are large, bipinnate, the pinnae wedge-shaped or 

 somewhat deltoid, trifid or quadrifid, incised and deeply ser- 

 rated, smooth, veined, and of a deep green colour ; the upper- 

 most somewhat pinnatifid. The flowers are disposed in ter- 

 minal spreading umbels, of many rays ; the umbellules of numer- 

 ous radii, sub-globose ; the outermost flowers irregular, pedi- 

 cellate and sterile, those of the centre regular, nearly sessile, 

 and fertile. The leaves of the involucre and involucel are va- 

 rious in number and form, those of the former are usually 

 about five and deciduous, of the latter, more numerous and 

 small. The calyx is small, permanent, with a five-toothed 

 margin, somewhat accrete after flowering. The petals are 

 white, or tinged with purple, slightly radiant, obcordate, emar- 

 ginate, and inflexed at the point. The filaments are slender, 

 tapering, longer than the petals, tipped with oblong brownish 

 anthers. The germen is inferior, ovate-oblong, supporting two 

 subulate, reddish, erectly-spreading styles, terminated by acute 

 stigmas. The fruit is linear-oblong, crowned by the permanent 

 calyx and elongated styles, separable into two carpels, (marked 

 with five obtuse ridges, of which the three intermediate ones 

 are slender,) each containing a terete convex seed. Plate 45, 

 fig. 4, (a) floret of the circumference ; (b) floret of the centre 

 or disk ; (c) fruit. 



This plant is frequent in watery places, osier-holts, and 

 about the banks of rivers, in most parts of Britain, and is par- 

 ticularly abundant on the banks of the Thames, between 

 Greenwich and Woolwich. It flowers in July. 



Omocvdv) is a term applied by Theophrastus and Dioscorides 

 to some plant of the umbelliferous kind, and is derived from 

 oivyi, the vine, av8o<;, a flower, alluding, it is supposed, to 

 the vinous smell of the blossoms. Matthiolus, in his " Com- 

 mentary," first applied the name to this genus. Lobel com- 

 pares this species to the Hemlock, referring, we suppose, to 

 some resemblance in its appearance or effects *. One of its 



* It is probably on account of its poisonous properties, that it still re- 

 tains the name Hemlock Water- Dropwort, as the foliage, both in ap- 



