Helenium autumnale. 95 



serrate, auute, and often acuminate, serratures irregular. Costa 

 and veins conspicuous, pistachia-green above, siskin-green under- 

 neath. Flowers varying in size, numerous, terminal and axillary, 

 some very large, an inch and three quarters in diameter, including 

 rajs, others an inch, and some only three-quarters of an inch. Pedun- 

 cles swelling as they approach the base of the calix. Kay-petals gam- 

 boge-yellow, about sixteen or seventeen in number, sometimes twen- 

 ty, three or four toothed, teeth obtuse, sometimes deeply cleft and 

 acute. Calix segments linear, numerous. Disk hemispherical, 

 greenish-yellow. Inhabits the margins of rivers and smaller waters 

 from Canada to Georgia. Flowering in September — common. 



The genus Helenium belongs to N. America, and received this 

 name from Linnaeus after he had referred the original Helenium 

 to Inula. Dioscorides describes Ea««», which professor Martyn in- 

 forms us was called in honour of Helen, consort of Menelaus, who 

 cultivated a plant, according to Hesychius, which destroyed serpents: 

 according to other ancient writers, "it sprung from her tears." 

 That the ancient plant alluded to, and of which this history is related, 

 is Inula helenium, or common Elecampane, seems to be acknow- 

 ledged by all modern writers. The strong resemblance between 

 the genus of which a species is here figured, and that of Elecam- 

 pane, induced Linnseus to call it Helenium. In the Hortus Cliffortia- 

 nus where he first described it, he called it Helenia, and this termi- 

 nation Gaertner has retained. In the Species Plantarum and other 



