THE CARROT FAMILY. 37, 



MANY-FLOWERED MARSH PENNYWORT. 



HydrocotyU unibillata. 



FAMILY COLOUR ODOUR RANGE TIME OF BLOOM 



Carrot. White, Scentless. Floriiia to M .issachusctts May Jutu 



and westward. 



Flowers: minute; growing in sniall umbels either simple, or proliferous borne 

 on elongated peduncles which arise from a point opposite the leaves. Involucre : 

 with ovate bracts. Calyx-teeth : minute. Lorollu : with five small petals. Fruit : 

 orbicular; without real oil tubes. Leaves : orbicular-peltate; bluntly crcnalc. 

 Stems: slender; creeping. 



Commonly we meet with these low marsli herbs which grow near or in 

 water, usually rooting themselves from the joints. Tliey belong to a not 

 very handsome or interesting group but in many places seem to play a 

 part in pond life. On the sides their carpels are flattened, and instead of 

 displaying prominent oil tubes there is an oil bearing layer of tissue. 



H. ranitncu/coldes, floating marsh-pennywort which is indigenous from 

 Florida to Pennsylvania and westward in muddy places, or in water where 

 it can float, has thick leaves, cleft from three to seven times and crenate 

 about their margins. Its long-peduncled umbels bear from five to ten 

 flowers. 



H. Cdnbyi, Canby's marsh-pennywort, is of creeping habit and bears 

 proliferous umbels in verticils of from three to nine flowers, the pedicels of 

 which are very short. Its leaves are peltate-orbicular and rather attractive. 



H. verticillata, whorled marsh-pennywort, thrives well in ditches along 

 the coast and is known by the verticillate way in which its umbels form on 

 the scape an interrupted spike. Its leaves also arise from the base and 

 are borne on long petioles. Unlike the fruits of the preceding species 

 those of this pennywort are not notched at their ends. 



A number of conspicuous plants that loudly proclaim themselves to be 

 members of the carrot family and which occur very commonly in this 

 country have, however, been introduced from the old world. 



Among them are the wode-whistle, or poison hemlock, Conium maculatum, 

 sometimes abounding in waste places; the fennel, Foeniculum Foenicfflum, 

 with its numerous umbels of bright yellow flowers, and thought by many 

 to be a plant of ill omen, as the proverb runs, " sowing fennel is sowing sor- 

 row." Again the fools' parsley, or cicely, ^tthusa Cynapium, an intensely poi- 

 sonous plant shows through waste places its numerous umbels of small white 

 flowers ; and the wild parsnip or tank, Pastinaca sativa, recognised as a com- 

 mon weed. Besides this goodly company so placidly thriving in the land 

 of their adoption there is, more general than them all, the wild carrot, or 



