362 THE EVENING-PRIMROSE FAMILY. 



branching stems and lanceolate leaves contracted to a nearly sessile base. 

 It is mostly through the mountainous parts of Georgia, Tennessee and 

 North Carolina that it is found. 



THE GINSENG FAMILY. 



AraliacecE. 



Trees, shrubs or herbs bearing their perfect or imperfect floivers in 

 umbels, racemes or panicles, and with mostly alterfiate, or whorlcd, com- 

 pound or decompound leaves. 



HERCULES CLUB. ANGELICA TREE. SPIKENARD TREE. 



Ardlia spinbsa. 



Flowers: very small, growing in umbels which form large compound panicles. 

 Calyx: with five minute teeth. Corolla: with five rounded spreading petals. 

 Stametts : five. Styles: five, spreading. Berries: ovoid, black. Leaves: very 

 large with long petioles; bipinnately compound; the leaflets numerous; ovate, 

 pointed at the apex, rounded and sessile or short stalked at the base; serrate; 

 dark green above, paler, glaucous and pubescent underneath. A shrub or tree 

 with very stout prickly stems or branches. 



Along the foot-hills of the Big Smokies in Tennessee and on the western 

 slopes of the Alleghanies the Hercules club is seen at its best. In this 

 latter region, in a gorge noted for its beauty, and leaning against a bank 

 clad with abundant verdure we first saw its great stems and enormous 

 panicles of black, juicy and shining fruit. For as well as being a shrub it 

 grows as a tree, thirty and thirty-live feet high, producing leaves fairly three 

 and four feet long which late in the autumn turn to tints of purple or light 

 yellow. So wonderfully beautiful did a spray of these leaves and berries 

 appear that Mrs. Rowan determined to carry a branch away for dec- 

 orative purposes. After a steep climb she secured it, just as the train which 

 \v^s to take us on to Roan Mountain Station turned a curve in the gorge. 



