AKACEJ5. (AKUM FAMILY.) 477 



Seeds with a conspicuous rhaphe and an embryo nearly the length of the hard 

 albumen. — A low perennial herb, growing in cold bogs, with a long creeping 

 rootstock, bearing heart-shaped long-petioled leaves, and solitary scapes. (An 

 ancient name, of unknown meaning. ) 



I. C. pallistris, L. — Cold bogs. New England to Penn., Wisconsin, and 

 common northward. June. — Seeds surrounded with jelly. (Eu.) 



4. SYMPLOCARPUS, Salisb. Skunk Cabbage. 



Spathe hooded-shell-form, pointed, very thick and fleshy, decaying in fruit. 

 Spadix globular, short-stalked, entirely covered with perfect flowers, which are 

 thickly crowded and their (1-celled or abortively 2-celled) ovaries immersed in 

 the fleshy receptacle. Sepals 4, hooded. Stamens 4, opposite the sepals, with 

 at length rather slender filaments : anthers extrorse, 2-celled, opening length- 

 wise. Style 4-angled and awl-shaped : stigma small. Ovule solitary, suspended, 

 anatropous. Eruit a globular or oval mass, composed of the enlarged and 

 spongy spadix, enclosing the spherical seeds just beneath the surface, which is 

 roughened with the persistent and fleshy sepals and pyramidal styles. Seeds 

 filled by the large globular and fleshy corm-like embryo, which bears one or 

 several plumules at the end next the base of the ovary : albumen none. — 

 Perennial herb, with a strong odor like that of the skunk, and also somewhat 

 alliaceous ; a thick descending rootstock bearing a multitude of long and coarse 

 fibrous roots, and a cluster of very large and broad entire veiny leaves, preceded 

 in earliest spring by the nearly sessile spathes, which barely rise out of the 

 ground. (Name from (ri;/i?rXoK^, connection, and Kafmos, fruit, in allusion to 

 the coalescence of the ovaries mto a compound fruit.) 



1. S. fcfetidus, Salisb. (Ictbdes, Bijre/.) — Bogs and moist grounds : com- 

 mon. — Leaves ovate and heart-shaped, 1° -2° long when grown, short-petioled. 

 — Spathe spotted and striped with purple and yellowish-green, ovate, incui-ved. 

 Eruit ripe in September, forming a roughened globular mass 2' -3' in diameter, 

 in decay shedding the bulblet-like seeds, which are 4" - 6" in diameter, and filled 

 with the singular solid fleshy embryo. 



5. 0R6NTIUM, L. Golden-club. 



Spathe incomplete and distant, merely a leaf-sheath investing the lower part 

 of the slender scape, and bearing a small and imperfect bract-like blade. Elow- 

 ers crowded all over the narrow spadix, perfect : the lower with 6 concave 

 sepals and 6 stamens ; the upper ones with 4. Filaments flattened : anthers 2- 

 celled, opening obliquely lengthwise. Ovary 1-celled, with an anatropous 

 ovule : stigma sessile, entire. Eruit a green utricle. Seed without albumen. 

 Embryo thick and fleshy, " with a. large concealed cavity at the summit, the 

 plumule curved in a groove on the outside." (Torr.) — An aquatic perennial, 

 with a deep rootstock, long-petioled and entire oblong and nerved floating 

 leaves, and the spadix terminating the elongated scape ; its rather club-shaped 

 emersed apex as thick as the spadix. (Origin of the name obscure.) 



1. O. aquS,tieum, L. — Ponds, Massachusetts to Virginia, near the coast, 

 and southward. May. 



