270 WEEDS AND USEFUL PLANTS. 



ORDEK LYII. PHYTOLACCA'CE^E. (POKEWEED FAMILY.) 



Herbs or suffruticose plants, having alternate entire leaves without stipules, and racemed 

 flowers of 4-5 petaloii] slightly connected sepals, with as many or twice as many stamens, 

 or sometimes indefinite. Ovary compound (rarely simple), consisting of 10 confluent 

 1-ovuled carpels ; styles or stigmas distinct. Fruit baccate ; embryo curved round mealy 

 albumen. 

 A small Order, and of little interest in Agriculture. 



1. PHYTOLAC'CA, Tournef. POKEWEED. 



[Gr. Phyton, a plant, and Lachanon, a pot-herb ; the young shoots being so used.] 



Flowers perfect. Calyx of five roundish-ovate, petal-like, persistent 

 sepals. Stamens 5 - 30. Ovary free, composed of 5-12 carpels united 

 in a ring, with as many short separate styles, in fruit forming a de- 

 pressed-globose 5-12-celled berry with a single vertical seed in each cell 



1. P, decan'dra, L. Stout ; smooth and often purple ; leaves ovate- 

 oblong ; berries 10-celled, juicy, dark-purple. 



DECANDROUS PHYTOLACCA. Poke. Poke-weed. Pigeon-berry. Garget. 

 Fr. Morelle a Grappes. Germ. Kermesbeere. Span. Yerba carmin. 



Root perennial, large, fusiform and branching. Stem herbaceous, 4-6 feet high, stout, 

 branching, terete or obtusely ribbed below the petioles and branches, finally purpb. 

 Leaves 5 -10 inches long, acute or acuminate, thin ; petioles half an inch to 2 inches or 

 more in length. Racemes 3-6 inches long, simple, mostly opposite the leaves, on angular 

 peduncles 2 - 4 inches long. Sepals white, membranaccous at the margin. .Berries verti- 

 cally depressed, umbilicate, orbicular, obscurely ribbed, 10-celled, 10-seeded, dark pur- 

 ple and juicy when mature. Seeds compressed , roundish-reniform. 



Rich soils ; on banks, borders of fields, in clearings, &c. : throughout the United States. 

 Fl. June -September. Fr. August -October. 



Obs. The~young shoots of this plant afford a good substitute for As- 

 paragus ; the root is said to be actively emetic ; and the tincture of the 

 ripe berries is, or was, a popular remedy for chronic rheumatism. The 

 mature berries, moreover, have been used by the pastry cook in making 

 pies of equivocal merit. Notwithstanding all this, the plant is regarded 

 and treated as a weed by all neat farmers. 



ORDER LVIII. CHENOPODIA'CEJE. (GOOSEFOOT FAMILY.) 



Chiefly coarse weed-like herbs, with mostly alternate, more or less fleshy leaves, without 

 stipules ; /towers minute, greenish, without scarious bracts, often dioecious or polygamous ; 

 calyx free from the ovary, 2- 5-lobed, imbricated in the bud, persistent, embracing tho 

 fruit ; stamens usually as many as the calyx-lobes, and opposite them ; otnry 1 -celled, 

 becoming a thin 1-seeded utricle, or rarely akene in fruit ; embryo (in the genera notice 1 

 here) coiled in a ring around the mealy albumen. 

 1. Flowers mostly perfect, or merely polygamous by the want of stamens in some of 



them. 

 alyx 3- 5-cleft, or parted, the lobes merely keeled in fruit. Seed horizontal (rarely 



vertical when the calyx is only 2-3-cleft). " ** 1. CHENororarsi. 



Calyx 5-cleft, the base indurated and corky in fruit. Seed horizontal. 2. BETA. 

 Calyx of 3-5 sepals, dry or juicy in fruit. Utricle membranaceous. 



Seed vertical. 3. BUTUM. 



^ '2. Flowers dioecious. 

 Calyx of fertile flower, inflated-tubular, unequally 2-4-toothed. 4. SPIXACIA. 



