Aquilegia.] ranunculace.e. 15 



A smooth, bushy herb, with a strong ungrateful odour and acrid poisonous pro- 

 perties. 



Root woody, covered with a thick, brownish black, wrinkled bark, and emitting 

 many stout wiry fibres. Stem or rather caudex 1 — 2 feet high, round, smooth, 

 naked and scarred beneatli, very leafy above. Leaves scattered, evergreen, pedate, 

 on long, deeply channelled petioles suddenly widened into almost sheathing bases, 

 cleft to ihe centre into mostly 9 linear or linear-lanceolate, sharply serrated, 

 blackish green, rigid, coriaceous segments, perfectly glabrous on both sides, gra- 

 dually diminishing in size as they pass by a dilatation of their footstalks into 

 broad leafy bracts, which towards the summit of the panicle are 3-cleft at their 

 extremity, the uppermost ovate, quite entire and pointed. Flowers numerous, 

 globose, drooping, in a large, lax, pale green panicle, their compressed pedicels 

 and the upper branches of the panicle glanduloso-pubescent. Calyx (petals, Sm.) 

 of 5 roundish or ovate, heart-shaped, concave leaves, pale green becoming edged 

 with purple in expansion, spreading only when in seed, otherwise connivent and 

 almost concealing the stamens, a little downy at the back. Petals (nectaries, 

 Sm.) mostly 5 or G, minute, deciduous, greenish, tubular and truncate, ribbed, 

 notched on the margin, compressed, glaudular and honey-bearing within at the 

 base, but destitute of a pore. Stamens numerous, the length of the calyx, placed 

 on a conical receptacle beneath the ovaries, falling away with the petals ; anthers 

 ovate, pale yellow, exlrorse. Ovaries 2 — 6, most commonly 3, slightly glan- 

 duloso-pilose, united beneath, tapering into slightly curved styles the length of 

 the stamens. Follicles 3 — 5, ovate, leatheiy, brownish, strongly and transversely 

 veined, connate at their base. Seed rather large, ovato-oblong, smooth, somewhat 

 wrinkled, black and shining. 



The broad deeply cleft leaves, with their rigid evergreen character, and long 

 petioles sheathing the short caudex, impart to H. foetidus somewhat of the aspect 

 of a dwarf fan-palm or palmetto. 



The early and complete separation of the stamens after impregnation, whilst 

 the less advanced flowers retain these organs, would lead us on a hasty view to 

 pronounce this species monoecious or rather polygamous. 



The acrimonious root sliced is inserted into the ears of swine as a local or 

 counter-irritant by the cattle-leeches in Hampshire. The species is often seen in 

 cottage-gardens, being a rustic remedy for worms in children, but the employment 

 of so violent a medicine in unskilful hands has too often been followed by seri- 

 ous consequences, and its use is now abandoned in regular practice. It is from 

 the use of the root as an issue for horses and horned cattle, that the term Setter- 

 wort is derived; the word " seltering" being in use with farriers to denote the 

 insertion of a seton or issue, and is probably a corruption of setoning. See 

 Churchill's Med. Bot. and Bailey's Dictionary, also Gerarde, Emend. 



IX. Aquilegia, Linn. Columbine. 



Calyx of 5 petaloid, deciduous sepals. Petals 5, funnel- or cor- 

 net-shaped, produced into a spur at base. Follicles 5, membra- 

 naceous, tipped with the persistent styles, many-seeded. 



Handsome perennials, with purple or variegated nodding flowers and ternately 

 compounded leaves, with stalked, rounded or wedge-shaped, usually 3-lobed leal- 

 lets, native chiefly to Europe, Siberia and North America in cold shady or hilly 

 situations. The rather few species known, if not actually inert, possess but little 

 energy as poisons. 



1 . A. vulgaris, L. Common Columbine. " Spur of the petals 

 incurved, follicles hairy, stem leafy many-flowered, leaves nearly 

 glabrous, stjdes as long as the stamens." — Br. Fl. p. 13. E. B. 

 t. 297. 



0. Flowers white. 



