NAT. ORDER, 
CompositcB. 
SILPHIUM TEEEBINTHACEUM. STATELY SILPHIUM. 
C/ass Jf/X Syngenesia. Order IV. Polygamia-Necessaria. 
Gen. Clmr. Calyx^ common, ovate. Scales^ ovate-oblong-. Corolla^ 
compound. Stamens^ hermaphrodite. Filaments, five, capillary, 
very short. 
A^e, Char. Anthers, cylindrical, tubular. Germen, round, slender. 
Style, filiform, very long-, villose. Stigma, simple. 
This is a perennial plant; stem herbaceous, four to six feet in 
heig-ht, glabrous, striated, branched, erect ; lower leaves ample, some 
of them a foot long-, cordate, coriaceous, acute, smooth above, beneath 
and at the marg-in beset with numerous short bristles, each seated on 
a smell white callous point ; petiole very long-, sometimes measuring- a 
foot or a foot and a half, below dilated into a sheathing- base ; the 
leaves g-radually become smaller and narrower and less stalked up- 
wards, and among- the flower-stalks they pass into bracteas about an 
inch long-, often spreading-, and with their margins involute ; jiowers 
paniculate, large, handsome, yellow ; involucre globose, of several 
■roundish, green, closely imbricated, glabrous scales, inermost ones 
smaller and longer ; corolla of the ray numerous, ligulate, entire at the 
apex, each bearing a pistil : segments of the stxjle long, filiform ; florets 
of the disk each subtended by a blunt, linear-oblong scale ; corolla 
yellow ; anthers protruded, dark brown ; style linear, filiform, entire ; 
germen cylindrical, slightly downy, abortive. 
This is a fine and elegant species of Silphium, to which the spe- 
cific name seems to be applied on account of a terebinthine gum^ 
Vol. IV.— 170. 
