102 NATURAL HISTOBY OF PLANTS. 



maturity in a thin wing eorresponding to the primary lateral ridges. 

 The three dorsal are filiform and but . slightly raised, separated from 

 each other by furrows mostly occupied by a single vitta, generally 

 shorter than the fruit and enlarged at its inferior extremity. In 

 Trigonosciadum, which in our opinion is inseparable from Heradeum, 



Heracleuin Sphondi/Uum. 



Pig. 92. Flower (f ). Fig. 94. Fruit. Fig. 93. Long. sect, of flower. 



the wing of the fruit is sometimes, but not constantly, a little thicker. 

 Heradeum comprises biennial or oftener perennial herbs from the 

 temperate regions of the northern hemisphere, with wide leayes often 

 divided into lobes themselves wide ; rarely pinnate, oftener compound- 

 or ternate-pinnate. Some of these plants inhabit Abyssinia, India 

 and North America. 



Equally near are Malabaila and Opopanax, which we cannot 

 separate generically from each other. The former has oboval or 

 orbicular fruit, much compressed, with solitary vittae and thick 

 dilated margin, smooth and formed of white tissue called suberose. 

 Malabaila proper is ordinarily glabrous. They are perennial herbs 

 with decompound pinnate leaves inhabiting the Levant, eastern 

 Africa, and Southern Europe. To them we annex, as a section, 

 Zozimia, distinguished only by the presence of a thin translucent 

 membrane between the thickeijed margin of the fruit and its seminal 

 cavity. It is a perennial downy herb, native of the Levant. Lefebvria 

 with us is also a section of Malabaila ; it has the same oboval fruit, 

 but the style, the branches of which are thick and attenuate at the 

 summit, is- inserted at the bottom of a very distinct hollow bounded 

 by the two wings above. It is from tropical Western Africa. Ana- 



