UMBELLIFEU.E. 155 



wild vegetation surrounding thorn. It is generally looked upon merely as a noxious 



■weed, though in some districts where it grows, the leaves are collected and given to 



pigs, who quickly fatten upon them ; hence the plant is called ffogtoeed. The stalks 



tripped of their rind, which is somewhat acrid, are edible, and are used as food in 



some parte of Asiatic Russia. In Siberia and Russia the stalks are dried in the sun, 

 when a sweet substance exudes from them, which resembles sugar, and is eaten as a 

 great delicacy. A spirit is distilled from the stalks thus prepared, by first fermenting 

 them with water and either mingling bilberries with them or not. Gmelin says 

 this spirit is more agreeable to the taste than spirit distilled from corn. The young 

 shoots and leaves may be boiled and eaten as a green vegetable, and when just 

 sprouting from the ground resemble asparagus in flavour. This experiment is, 

 however, seldom tried, owing to the ignorance of those to whom such an addition to 

 the table would be a benefit and luxury. 



GENUS XXIX.— T ORDYLIUM. Linn. 



Calyx-limb of 5 teeth. Petals obovate, notched, with an inflexed 

 lobe, the exterior ones radiant and bifid. Creniocarp oval or 

 orbicular, compressed from back to back of the mericarps, finely 

 tuberculated, often pubescent, surrounded by a wing thickened 

 towards the outside ; columella free, bipartite ; mericarps with 

 the dorsal ridges obsolete, the lateral ones developed into a narrow 

 thickened wing, so that the mericarp seems set in a frame ; 

 interstices with 1 or more filiform vittas. Involucre many-leaved. 



Herbs with pinnate leaves, with subsessile or shortly stalked 

 ovate or lanceolate ctit leaflets ; and white radiant monoecious 

 flowers, in rather small umbels : the exterior flowers of the umbel- 

 rules fertile, the inner ones barren. 



The name of this genus appears to be a corruption of Tartiliun, from torquco, I 

 twist ; from the form of its branches, or that of its fruits, which seem as if turned or 

 wrought by art. 



SPECIES I.— T ORDYLIUM MAXIMUM. Linn. 

 Plate DCXIV. 

 Billot, Fl. Gall, et Germ. Exsicc. No. 29. 



Leaves pinnate, with 2 to 3 pairs of leaflets ; leaflets sessile, 

 oblong or lanceolate, inciso-serrate ; terminal leaflet in the upper 

 leaves sub-rhomboidal or strapshaped, much longer than tbe others. 

 Involucre and involucel many-leaved. Flowers slightly radiant, 

 the outermost petal larger than the others, cut into 2 equal lobes. 

 Pedicels very short. Creniocarp roundish oval, hairy, surrounded 

 by a thickened continuous even margin. 



In waste places. Very rare. Under the hedge on the north side 



