Perennial. — Flowers from June to September. 
Root fibrous. Sterns creeping, thread-shaped, slender, smooth, 
quite prostrate, often subdivided, rooting at each joint, and pro- 
ducing from the same point a tuft of leaves and flowers. Leaves 
horizontal, nearly round, about an inch in diameter, doubly cre- 
nate, smooth, glossy, light green, the centre a little depressed, and 
marked with a whitish dot, from which the veins radiate, and form 
a kind of net-work on both surfaces. Petioles ( leaf-stalks ) soli- 
tary or aggregate, from 2 to 4 inches or more long, upright, cylin- 
drical, slender, simple from the base. Peduncles ( flower-stalks ) 
axillary, one or more accompanying each group of leaves, shorter 
than the petioles, with a pair of broad bracleas at the base. Umbel 
very small, its rays so short as to he scarcely observable, usually 
about 5, with 3 or 4 thin spear-shaped bracteas at their base. 
Flowers small, reddish white, or rose-colour. Fruit of a pale 
brown colour, striated, and compressed laterally, that is, contrary 
to the juncture. The flowers being very small, and the flower- 
stalks shorter than the leaf-stalks, are easily overlooked, though 
they are abundant in their season ; but the plant is easily known 
by the petiole being inserted into the centre of the under side of 
the leaf, a circumstance uncommon in European plants. It affords 
an excellent example of what Linnaeus calls folium peltatum. 
The whole plant is acrid, and probably, like others of the um- 
belliferous tribe growing in wet places, poisonous. This plant has 
received its English names of White-rot ; Flowkwort ; Sheep- 
killing Penny-grass; Sheep’s-bane ; and Penny-rot; from an old 
belief that feeding upon it caused the liver-rot in sheep. This 
opinion, which is altogether an error, arose from the Fluke or 
Flounder insect ( Fasciola hepatica,J being found in marshy grounds 
where the Hydrocotyle and other similar plants abound ; but sheep 
are well known never to eat this plant. 
An account of the Rot in Sheep, with many useful and interesting 
remarks on the nature, symptoms, and treatment of that disease, 
may be seen in Loudon’s Encyclopaedia of Agriculture, a book 
which no Farmer should be without ; Loudon’s Magazine of 
Natural History, vols. 4 & 5 ; and Baxter’s Library of Agri- 
cultural and Horticultural Knowledge, (2nd ed.) p. 552. 
“ The vegetable kingdom opens to the attentive observer a vast 
field, where he may contemplate the boundless power and omni- 
potent wisdom of the Creator ; where he may discover, with admi- 
ration, the most wonderful order, and incomprehensibly beneficial 
designs.” 
“ Soft roll your inccnce herbs, and fruits, and fiow’rs, 
In mingled clouds to Him ; whose sun exhales, 
Whose breath perfumes you, and whose pencil paints.” 
Thomson. 
