Taz VEGETABLE SYSTEM 13 
OR eo Ss ain 
BURWEE D. 
SAN OF BLUM 
Character of the Genus: 
The Head is an obtufe Cone ; the nie Cup is equal in length to the 
| Flowers. 
Plate 4.0. ab. 
1 THORNY BURWEED. 
Plate 4. ae I. 
Character of the Sptsite } | Xanthium Spinofum. 
The Leaves have no Footftalks ; and the Stalk is thorny. | 
Fig. t.@ 5 
Tus is an Annual ; native of Portugal, and flowers in Juné. It grows to two feet 
and a half high. The Stalk is pale ; the Leaves are of a fine grafs green ; the Thorns, 
‘which grow by three’s near the Bafes of the Leaves, are brown. The Flowers are whitith, 
with a tinge of green; and the Fruit, which i is rough, and grows on other parts sh the 
Plant, is of a pale Olive colour: | | 
UNARMED BURWEED, 
Plate 4. Fig. 2. 
LESSER BURDOCK, — 
Charset of the Species, ‘Xanthium Strumarium. 
The Leaves have Footfalks; and the Stalks have no Thorns. 
Fig. 2.@ b. 
Turis is an fee, native of our ditch banks, wafte grounds, and old dunghills, but 
not common. It rifes toa foot and a half high ; and flowers from July to September : 
rugged Plant of irregular growth, but with fingularity enough to fupply the place it 
beauty.. The Stalk is of dirty red, {potted with black ; or a very deep gloomy purple. 
The Leaves are of a faint green. The Flowers are pale and whitifh: There are, befide 
thefe, diftinét Fruits or Seed Veffels, on different parts of the plant. The Seed Veffels 
are the part which occafioned its being called Burr, and Little Burdock, for they are co= 
vered with a kind of hooked Spines. | 
Ir is faid this Plant will cure the Evil: And one may be led to fuppofe there are va- 
luable qualities in it, becaufe Nature has given it in a manner to the whole world:, 2 
circumftance that occurs in very few Plants; indeed, with re{pect to America; in fo few, 
that it has been thought Europe, and that vaft country, had noneincommon. . 
Tuts is a problem fo much contefted ; and the prefent inftance decides it fo fairly, that 
it may not be amifs to enter uponit, fomewhat at large, now we have fo fair an occafion. 
America furnifhed us fo many new Plants, and we received from thence fo little that 
bore even a refemblance to what we had before in Europe, that imagination; which al- 
_ ways outruns judgment, and in its rath hafte, generally concludes upon too flight premifes, 
-prefently declared there was no Plant common to the new world, as it is called, and the 
D | old. 
