212 ENGLISH BOTANY. 
long, and + to } inch long at the summit, the sides nearly straight, 
the apex truncate and emarginate, the lobes on each side of the 
style slightly rounded; style about half as long as the lobes. 
Seeds cylindrical-oblong, reddish brown, coarsely punctured. Plant 
greyish green, sometimes glabrous and sometimes clothed with 
long hairs and stellate down. 
Common Shepherd's Purse, Poor Man's Parmacetic, 
St. James’s Weed, Cassweed. 
French, Capselle Bourse a-Pasteur. German, Gemeiner Hirtentischel, Ttschelkraut. 
This little plant is known to every wayfarer, and is seen in every garden, where it 
grows far too rapidly to be pleasant to the gardener. When cultivated in a rich soil it 
attains a much larger size than when living as a weed on wild bits of ground. In 
America it is used as a green vegetable, and is cultivated about Philadelphia for that 
purpose. It was formerly employed as an astringent against spitting of blood, bleeding 
at the nose, and as a styptic to wounds, 
GENUS XXIV—LEPIDIUM. Linn. 
Sepals short, erect or spreading, equal at the base. Petals 
equal, entire, or none. Filaments without wings or appendages, 
2 or 4 of them sometimes abortive or absent. Pod generally 
compressed at right angles to the replum, and usually more convex 
on the lower than on the upper surface, variable in shape but 
generally oval or orbicular, more or less notched at the apex, more 
rarely scarcely compressed and constricted between the valves so 
as to be didymous; valves keeled down the back, with the keel 
frequently, but not always, produced into a wing, usually leaving 
the seeds attached to the placentze round the replum when they 
separate, more rarely closed over the seed and covering it with 
them; style almost none or elongate. Seeds 1 (or very rarely 2) in 
each cell, ovoid or oblong-ovoid, more rarely compressed. Embryo 
with the cotyledons folded over at the point where they join the 
radicle. 
Glabrous or hairy herbs or undershrubs. Flowers small, white, 
in corymbs or very short racemes, which afterwards elongate. 
The name Lepidium comes from Nemec (epis, lepidos), a scale, in allusion to tue 
form of the pods, which resemble little scales. 
Sus-Genus I.—NASTURTIASTRUM. Gr. & Godr. 
Pod orbicular or oval, compressed, entire or scarcely notched 
at the apex; valves keeled, but not winged or very slightly so; 
cotyledons entire. 
