378 16. ASAllUJM EUROPIUM. [CL. XI, 



CLASS XI. 



16. 



Asarum Europaeum, L. 



Haselwurz, Weihrauchkraut. — French, Cabaret, Rondclli\ 

 Oreille cThomme. — Engl. Asarabacca. — Ital. La baccJtera, 

 spigo salvatico. — Swed. Hasselbrt 



This small, unostentatious, but interesting plant, grows in 

 our forests, particularly under hazel bushes. Its stem is of 

 a brown colour, about the size of a pigeon's quill, lies low, 

 and throws out fibrous roots. These last are externally brown, 

 internally white, and have a strong smell and a sharp taste, 

 which may be compared to that of pepper or ginger. The 

 ascending shoots, like the leaf-stalks, are set with hairs, and at 

 the base of the leaf-stalks are two membranaceous, brownish 

 stipula: or sheaths. The leaf-stalks are roundish, set with 

 hairs, and always grow in pairs. The leaves are kidney- 

 shaped, very obtuse at the point, hairy, but of a shining 

 dark-green colour, ciliated, quite entire, intersected by veins 

 an inch long, and two inches broad. Between two of 

 the leaf-stalks springs the flower-stalk, also set with hairs, 

 nodding, half an inch in length, and carrying over the ger- 

 men a brownish coloured calyx, externally hairy, of the na- 

 ture of a corolla, and terminating in three pointed, upright 

 vstanding lobes. Twelve pointed, reddish filaments surround 

 the pistillum, are longer than it, but shorter than the calvx. 

 A little below their summits, the bilocular yellow anthera^ 

 are as it were stuck to them. The pistillum is a thick co- 

 lumn, which carries at its top a six-lobed, radiated, reddish 

 stigma. The capsule is six-celled, and in each of the cells 

 it contain^ two seeds concave on one side, which consist chiefly 

 of albumen, and contain the uncvolvcd embryon, like a pointy 



