Botany of the Beet 



169 



The Beet Plant 



Beta. Chenopodiacece. Perhaps a half dozen species of 

 herbaceous plants, biennial and perennial, on the coasts of 

 Europe, Asia and Africa. 



B. vulgaris, Linn. Sp. PL 222. (B. esculenta, Salisb. Prodr. 

 152. 1796. B. vulgaris var. esculenta, Guerke, in Richter- 

 Guerke, PI. Eur. ii, 127. 1897.) Cultivated Beet. Biennial 

 (rarely annual), glabrous, smooth, the growing parts often 

 red, yellow or metallic-green (particularly midribs and 

 petioles : taproot thickened into a single downright tuber, 

 in many sizes, shapes and colors : stem produced the second 

 year, one from the top of the tuber and sometimes a few 

 small supplementary ones, slender and grooved, erect but fall- 

 ing with the load of fruit, much branched and leafy, the 

 main stem 2 to 4 ft. tall : leaves in a tuft from the crown, the 

 blade ovate to oblong-ovate in outline, truncate or semi-cordate 

 or abruptly tapering at base, obtuse or muticous, the margins 

 undulate and entire or irregularly sinuate-dentate, the slender 

 petiole usually exceeding the blade ; stem leaves petioled, 

 smaller, the lower ones of similar shape to the radical leaves, 

 those in the inflorescence passing into linear spreading bracts : 

 flowers greenish, very small, sessile, in long paniculate racemes, 

 the plant producing great numbers on its many slender 

 branches, usually about 2 or 3 flowers together, with minute 

 bractlets beneath the perianth, which has 5 incurving parts, 

 on the inside of which parts are the 5 stamens ; ovary 1, 

 sunk in a disc or hypanthium, the styles usually 3 and with 

 blunt or ovate stigmas ; the perianth and disc are persistent, 

 inclosing the single seed in a hard case bearing corky protu- 

 berances which are the thickened and modified perianth-parts, 

 the 2 or more flowers in the cluster growing together by their 

 bases and forming the very irregular fruit-mass known as 

 the " seed " of commerce ; this fruit-mass weighs 5 to .50 mg., 

 and on the faces of it one is able to make out the 5 promi- 

 nences of the different flower-parts ; longevity of seed about 

 5 or 6 years. — Unknown wild; regarded as an ameliorated 



