STUDIES OF PLANT LIFE 
in the full-blown flowers, displaying the stamens and 
pistils and soft woolly pappus.. The clustered flowers, on 
slender footstalks, droop very gracefully at intervals on 
the stem, which with the branchlets have a purplish tinge. 
In the variety Serpentaria this color pervades the whole 
plant to a greater degree, and the leaves are more deeply 
divided than in the type. 
In damp rich woods we often find a slender, delicate 
species which is commonly called 
Lion’s-root—Nabalus altissimus (Hook.). 
The plant is from two to three feet high; leaves light 
green, thin, coarsely toothed and widely lobed. The strap- 
shaped flowers are narrow, pointed and revolute; the scales 
are of a pale green, the pappus of a beautiful fawn color. 
The elegant yellow drooping flowers, in clusters, make this 
forest plant a very attractive object. 
The above plant was pointed out to me as the true 
Lion’s-foot by an old Yankee settler, and I have retained 
the name, though it does not quite correspond with Gray’s 
plant, so called. Gray’s Lion’s-foot is also known as Gall 
of the Earth, from the intense bitterness of its root; 
possibly all these bitter milky-juiced plants are narcotics, 
but as yet not recognized unless by the unlearned Indian 
or the old herbalist of some remote backwoods settlement 
where doctors and druggists were unknown and the herbs of 
the field were the only medicaments—generally administered 
by an old woman famed more for her herb decoctions and 
plasters than for her wisdom in book-learning, who believed 
that there was a salve for every sore and a potion for every 
ailment under the sun if the folk had but faith to believe 
in her “ yarbs.” 
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