6 



N. Ord. EANTINCULACE^. 

 Tribe Helleborece. 



Genus Aconitum,* Linn. B. & H., Gen., i, p. 9 ; Baill., Hist. 

 PL, i, p. 23. Species about 20, inhabitants of temperate and 

 montane districts in both the old and new worlds. 



6. Aconitum Napellus,t Linn., Sp. Plant., ed. l,p. 532 (1753). 



Monkshood. Wolfsbane. Aconite. 



Syn. A. vulgare, DC. A. tauricum, Jacq. A. angustifolium, Bernh. 

 A. multifidum, Koch. A. dissectum, Don. A. ferox, Wall., in PL 

 Asiat. rar. (not elsewhere). 



Figures. Woodville, 1. 165 ; Steph. & Ch., t. 28 ; Nees, t. 395, & Supp. ; 

 Hayne, xii, tt. 12-14; Berg & Sch., t. 28 f ; Syme, E. Bot., i, t. 48; 

 Reich., Ic. Fl. Germ., iv, t. 92 ; Wallich, PL Asiat. rar., t. 41. 



Description. An herbaceous perennial with a short fleshy root- 

 stock or tuber tapering below, and passing insensibly into a long 

 slender root, giving off numerous branches, skin dark brown or 

 nearly black, interior white ; from the upper part of the rootstock 

 are given off one or more very short thick lateral shoots each of 

 which developes at the end a new pale -coloured tuber with a 

 terminal bud and passing below into a filiform root. Flowering 

 stem solitary, stout, erect, 2 4 feet high, unbranched, smooth, 

 slightly hairy above, green. Leaves alternate, long- stalked, 

 spreading, very deeply cut palmately into 5 or 3 segments, which 

 are again deeply and irregularly divided into oblong acute 

 laciniae, dark green and shining above, paler beneath and slightly 

 hairy. Flowers large, not very numerous, stalked, forming 

 an erect rather lax terminal raceme; pedicels erect, downy, 

 thickened at the end, in the axils of short, lanceolate bracts, and 

 with two smaller bracts close to each flower. Sepals 5, petaloid, 

 very unequal, deciduous, imbricate, dark blueish-purple, the 

 upper one large, helmet- shaped, laterally compressed, pointed, 



* Aconitum, OKOVITOV, the classical name for some plants of this genus, 

 j- Napellus, a name given in the middle ages, from the shape of the root 

 being somewhat like a small turnip, napus. 



