102 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



maturity in a thin wing corresponding to the primary lateral ridges. 

 The three dorsal are filiform and but slightly raised, separated from 

 each other by furrows mostly occupied by a single yitta, generally 

 shorter than the fruit and enlarged at its inferior extremity. In 

 Trigonosciaduni, which in our opinion is inseparable from Heracleum, 



Hvracletiin Sphondylium. 



Fig. 92. Flower (f ). Fig. 94. Fruit. Fig. 93. Long. sect, of flower. 



the wing of the fruit is sometimes, but not constantly, a little thicker. 

 Heracleum comprises biennial or oftener perennial herbs from the 

 temperate regions of the northern hemisphere, with wide leaves often 

 divided into lobes themselves wide ; rarely pinnate, oftener compound- 

 er ternate-pinnate. Some of these plants inhabit Abyssinia, India 

 and North America. 



Equally near are Malahaila and Opopanax, which we cannot 

 separate generically from each other. The former has oboval or 

 orbicular fruit, much compressed, with solitary vittee and thick 

 dilated. margin, smooth and formed of white tissue called suberose. 

 Malahaila proper is ordinarily glabrous. They are perennial herbs 

 with decompound pinnate leaves inhabiting the Levant, eastern 

 Africa, and Southern Europe. To them we annex, as a section, 

 Zozimia, distinguished only by the presence of a thin translucent 

 membrane between the thickened margin of the fruit and its seminal 

 cavity. It is a perennial downy herb, native of the Levant. Lefehvria 

 with us is also a section of Malahaila ; it has the same oboval fruit, 

 but the style, the branches of which are thick and attenuate at the 

 summit, is inserted at the bottom of a very distinct hollow bounded 

 by the two wings above. It is from tropical Western Africa. Ana- 



