116 



NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



Athamantha 

 Matthioli. 



also having a seed slightly concave within and the wide vittae of 

 which more or less raise the tissue of the furrows between the 

 secondary ridges ; Today oa, a plant of the Canary isles, whose fruit is 

 distinguished, as in several other genera, by the greater development 

 of its marginal ridges ; and Angelica scahra, a perennial herb of the 

 eastern Pyrenees, type of a genus Xatardia, the 

 habit of which is somewhat peculiar, but it has 

 the fruit of Seseli, except that the primary ridges 

 are thicker, obtuse, and formed of suberose tissue 

 of a whitish colour.^ 



Athamantha resembles Seseli on the one hand 

 and several types of the following series on the 

 other. It has oblong fruit with a transverse 

 section nearly circular or slightly compressed 

 parallel to the partition. The stylopods are thick, 

 variable in form, and the face of the seed is nearly 

 flat, more rarely traversed by a slight vertical 

 furrow, in the species quite typical of the genus 

 such as A. Matthioli (fig. 117). The vittae are 

 solitary in each furrow, and there are sometimes 

 more slender ones under the primary ridges. In 

 A. cretensis, type of a genus Fetrocarvi, the seed 

 is slightly concave within. In Tinguarra it is 

 much more concave ; on which ground they are 

 made a section of the genus Athamantha. They 

 have also been distinguished by the number of 

 their vittae, said to be indefinite. If this cha- 

 racter is true for T. sicula, it is not always so for certain other 

 species, as T. cervaricefolia, where we find only solitary vittae. Knnd- 

 mannia appears to us also an Athamantha with a fruit somewhat 

 obtuse at the summit, hard ridges and fine vittae, very variable in 

 number, ordinarily anastomose between them near the extremities. 



Fig. 117. Fruit (f). 



* With some hesitation we place near Seseli 

 the two imperfectlj^ known genera, Sclerochorton 

 and Hatissknechtia, hoth from the Levant. The 

 former, with a slightly compressed fruit, has a 

 concave seed-face, numerous sinuous bandlets, 

 and a female flower sessile in the centre of the 

 umbellule, which is surrounded by sterile rays. 



The latter, the fruit of which is unknown, has 

 nearly the inflorescence of a JDorema^ with brac- 

 teoles united in a cuplike involucre and a late- 

 rally compressed ovary, with an interlocular 

 paitition hollowed with resiniferous chambers. 

 The umbels are compound though very shortly 

 stipitate. 



