CUCURBITACE.E. Ill 



The driveling of horses which are pastured in August and 

 September, is attributed to the noxious salivating properties of 

 this plant. 



L. pallida. Muhl. A common plant over fields, 1-2 feet 

 high, slender, not branched, with quite small flowers, bluish, and 

 the spatulate root-leaves early decaying ; June and July. 



L. Kalmii. L. As tall as the last, but more slender ; entire 

 leaves linear, and flowers on long foot-stalks ; fields ; much more 

 rare than the others. 



L. Dortmanna. L. Common to Britain and this country ; 

 stem a foot or more high, with pale-blue flowers, pendulous, and 

 remotely racemed ; swamps and wet grounds ; July. 



L. syphilitica. L. From 1 to 3 feet high, and larger in pro- 

 portion than the others, with sessile, ovate-lanceolate leaves, and 

 large blue flowers on short pedicels ; swamps ; August and Sep- 

 tember. If this plant ever had any special action upon the dis- 

 ease after which it is named, and which is the manifest curse of 

 divine providence upon the particular guilt of man, it appears long 

 since to have been deprived of its influence. 



L. Nuttallii, R. and S., seems to occur in a few places, in 

 swamps ; small, filiform, 2 feet high, with oblong -linear leaves. 



ORDER 181. CUCURBITACEJE. The Gourd Tribe. 



Calyx 5-toothed, sometimes obsolete ; corolla with 5 divisions*, 

 scarcely distinguishable from the calyx, with strongly marked 

 veins ; stamens 5, distinct, or cohering in 3 parcels ; stigma very 

 thick ; ovary inferior, 1 -celled, and the fruit fleshy, succulent, 

 showing the scar of the calyx, and having flat seeds ; stem suc- 

 culent, climbing by means of tendrils or rooting by them ; leaves 

 palmate, or with palmate ribs, succulent ; flowers white, red, 

 yellow, usually diclinous, or with stamens and pistils in different 

 flowers, sometimes monoclinous. 



