PARSLEY FAMILY. Umbelliferae. 
PARSLEY FAMILY. Umbelliferae. 
A large family, widely distributed, not abundant in the 
tropics; usually strong-smelling herbs, remarkable for their 
aromatic oil, mostly with hollow, grooved stems; leaves 
alternate, compound, generally deeply cut, leaf-stalks 
often broadened at base; flowers very small, usually in 
broad, flat-topped clusters, generally with bracts; calyx 
usually a five-toothed rim around the top of the ovary; 
petals five, small, usually with tips curled in, inserted on a 
disk, which crowns the ovary and surrounds the base of the 
styles; stamens five, with threadlike filaments and swinging 
anthers, also on the disk; ovary two-celled, inferior, with 
two threadlike styles; fruit two, dry, seedlike bodies, when 
ripe separating from each other, and usually suspended 
-from the summit of a slender axis, each body marked with 
ribs, usually with oil-tubes between the ribs. The exami- 
nation of these oil-tubes in mature fruits, with a microscope, 
is necessary to determine most of the genera and species, 
so description of genera is omitted here, and botanists 
have added to the difficulties of the amateur by giving 
almost every genus more than one name. The flowers are 
much alike, yet the leaves often differ very much in the 
same genus. Many kinds are poisonous, although others, 
suchas Parsley, Carrot,and Parsnip, are valuable food plants. 
A fine robust plant, a foot or more tall, 
Peucédanum ; ; 
Eacystera 7 with stout, purplish stems and smooth, 
Yellow crisp leaves, the lower ones with three 
Spring leaflets, the upper with five, and the teeth 
California 
tipped with bristles: The flowers are 
greenish-yellow and the main cluster measures four or five 
inches across, with no bracts at base, but the small clusters 
have bracts. The flowers are ugly, but the foliage is 
handsome and the seed vessels richly tinted with wine- 
color, making the plant decorative and conspicuous on the 
sea cliffs of southern: California. 
A quaint little plant, only about three 
lag eagle inches high, with a tuberous root, spread- 
Lara ing, slanting stems, and smooth leaves, all 
White from the root, with three, long, narrow 
Spring leaflets; a reddish, stiff, papery scale 
Northwest and 
a sheathing the stem at base. The minute, 
white flowers form a cluster less than an 
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