PARSLEY FAMILY. Umbelli ferae. 



PARSLEY FAMILY. Umbelliferae. 



A large family, widely distributed, not abundant in the 

 tropics; usually strong-smelling herbs, remarkable for their 

 aromatic oil, mostly with hollow, grooved stems; leaves 

 alternate, compound, generally deeply cut, leaf-stalks 

 often broadened at base; flowers very small, usually in 

 broad, flat- topped clusters, generally with bracts; calyx 

 usually a five-toothed rim around the top of the ovary; 

 petals five, small, usually with tips curled in, inserted on a 

 disk, which crowns the ovary and surrounds the base of the 

 styles; stamens five, with threadlike filaments and swinging 

 anthers, also on the disk; ovary two-celled, inferior, with 

 two threadlike styles; fruit two, dry, seedlike bodies, when 

 ripe separating from each other, and usually suspended 

 from the summit of a slender axis, each body marked with 

 ribs, usually with oil-tubes between the ribs. The exami- 

 nation of these oil-tubes in mature fruits, with a microscope, 

 is necessary to determine most of the genera and species, 

 so description of genera is omitted here, and botanists 

 have added to the difficulties of the amateur by giving 

 almost every genus more than one name. The flowers are 

 much alike, yet the leaves often differ very much in the 

 same genus. Many kinds are poisonous, although others, 

 such as Parsley, Carrot, and Parsnip, are valuable food plants. 



A fine robust plant, a foot or more tall, 

 Peucedanum . . ,. , n 



Euryptera Wlt ^ stout purplish stems and smooth, 



Yellow crisp leaves, the lower ones with three 



Spring leaflets, the upper with five, and the teeth 



California tipped with bristles. The flowers are 



greenish-yellow and the main cluster measures four or five 

 inches across, with no bracts at base, but the small clusters 

 have bracts. The flowers are ugly, but the foliage is 

 handsome and the seed vessels richly tinted with wine- 

 color, making the plant decorative and conspicuous on the 

 sea cliffs of southern California. 



A quaint little plant, only about thr 

 Turkey Peas inches high, with a tuberous root, sprea 

 in?ifllia in S> slantin g stems, and smooth leaves, a 



White from the root, with three, long, narro 



Spring leaflets; a reddish, stiff, papery sea 



sheathin S the stem at base - The minut 

 white flowers form a cluster less than a 



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