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MANUAL OF POISONOUS PLANTS 



Genera of Urticaceae 

 Herbs with stinging hairs. 



Leaves opposite ; flowers 4-parted 2. Urtica, 



Leaves alternate ; staminate flowers 5-parted 3. Laportea. 



Herbs or trees without stinging hairs. 



Herbs ; pistillate flowers spiked 1. Cannabis. 



Trees ; staminate flowers racemose 4. Madura. 



1. Cannabis, Tourn. Hemp 



Dioecious herbs with tough fiber to the inner bark; greenish flowers; sepals 

 5 in the staminate, 1 in the fertile flower; achene, crustaceous. 



Cannabis sativa, L. 



Stem from 4-8 feet high with broad, divided leaves, the linear-lanceo- 

 late segments sharply and closely serrate; greenish flowers with narrow stam- 

 inate panicles and erect pistillate spikes, the sterile with 5 sepals and 5 stamens, 

 fertile flowered spiked, with 1 sepal ; fruit hard ovoid, achene oblong. 



Distribution. Native to Europe and Asia and in waste places from New 

 Brunswick to Tennessee, Kansas and Minnesota. 



Fig. 191. Hemp (Cannabis sativa). Staminate and pistillate 

 flowering branches; fruit; longitudinal section of fruit. (After 

 Faguet.) 



