UMBELLIFEU^E. (pAllSLET FAMILY.) 187 



white flowers; the sterile in compound racemes often 1° long, the fruitful in 

 small clusters or solitary, from the same axils. (Name composed of e^Ii/os, 

 a hedgehog, and kvcttls, a bladder, from the prickly covering of the at length 

 bladdery fruit.) 



1. E. lobata, Torr. & Gr. Root annual; leaves deeply and sharply 5- 

 lobed ; fruit oval (2' long) ; seeds flat, dark-colored. (Sicyos lobatus, Michx. 

 Momdrdica echinata, Muhl. ) — Rich soil along rivers, W. New England to 

 Wisconsin and Kentucky : also cult, for arbors. July - Oct. 



3. MELOTHRIA, L. Melothria. 



Flowers polygamous or monoecious ; the sterile campanulate, the corolla 5- 

 lobed ; the fertile with the calyx-tube constricted above the ovary, then cam- 

 panulate. Anthers more or less united. Berry small, pulpy, filled with many 

 flat and horizontal seeds. — Tendrils simple. Flowers very small. (Altered 

 from MrjXcodpou, an ancient name for a sort of white grape.) 



1 . M. pendula, L. Slender, from a perennial root, climbing ; leaves 

 small, roundish and heart-shaped, 5-angled or lobed, roughish ; sterile flowers 

 few in small racemes ; the fertile solitary, greenish or yellowish ; berry ovaL 

 green. — Copses, Virginia and southward. June -Aug. 



Order 46. UMBEM.IFERiE. (Parsley Family.) 



Herbs, with small Jlowers in umbels (or rarely in heads), the calyx entirely 

 adhering to the 2-celled and 2-ovuled ovary, the 5 petals and 5 stamens in- 

 serted on the disk that crowns the ovary and surrounds the base of the 2 

 styles. Fruit consisting of 2 seed-like dry carpels. Limb of the calyx 

 obsolete, or a mere 5-toothed border. Petals either imbricated in the bud 

 or valvate with the point innexed. The two carpels (called mericarps) 

 cohering by their inner face (the commissure), when ripe separating from 

 each other and usually suspended from the summit of a slender prolon- 

 gation of the axis (carpophore) : each carpel marked lengthwise with 5 

 primary ribs, and often with 5 intermediate (secondary) ones ; in the inter- 

 stices or intervals between them are commonly lodged the oil-tubes (vittw), 

 which are longitudinal canals in the substance of the fruit, containing 

 aromatic oil. (These are best seen in slices made across the fruit.) Seed 

 suspended from the summit of the cell, anatropous, with a minute embryo 

 in hard albumen. — Stems usually hollow. Leaves alternate, mostly com- 

 pound, the petioles expanded or sheathing at the base : rarely with true 

 stipules. Umbels usually compound ; when the secondary ones are termed 

 umbellets : each often subtended by a whorl of bracts (that under the 

 umbel is the involucre; that of the umbellet, involucel). — In many the 

 flowers are dichogamous, i. e. the styles are protruded from the bud some 

 time before the anthers develop, — an arrangement for cross-fertilization. 

 — A large family, some of the plants innocent and aromatic, others with 

 very poisonous (acrid-narcotic) properties ; the flowers much alike in all, 



