Root of many fleshy, spindle-shaped knobs or tubers. Stems 
from 1 to 2 feet high, annual, simple, cylindrical, leafy, smooth, 
polished, and more or less tinged with red. Leaves twice ternate ; 
leaflets egg-shaped, entire, flat, sometimes veined with red, of a 
dark shining green above, paler beneath. The uppermost leaf is 
sometimes ternate only, or simple ; rarely pinnate. Flowers ter- 
minal, solitary, very ornamental. Sepals concave, smooth, irregu- 
lar. Petals crimson, regular, roundish, concave, spreading. Fila- 
ments red ; with yellow anthers. Germens 2, 3, or 4, egg-shaped, 
white, downy, with recurved, crimson stigmas. Seed-vessels 
( follicles) internally reddish and pollished. Seeds (fig. 3.) black 
and shining ; the interspersed abortive ones (f. 4.) angular, scarlet. 
This very handsome and well marked species is a native of 
many parts of Europe; France, Balearic Islands, Greece, and 
Siberia. It was first added to the British Flora by F. Bowcher 
Wright, Esq., who, in 1803, introduced it to the notice of Bo- 
tanists, as growing undoubtedly wild, and in great profusion, in 
the rocky clefts of the island called Steep Holmes in the broad part 
of the river Severn, where it is conjectured to have grown for ages. 
It is observed by Dr. Withering, that “ few aquatic excursions 
of a day can prove more interesting to the Naturalist, especially 
the Geologist, Ornithologist, and Botanist, than a sail from Bristol, 
through the romantic pass of St. Vincent’s Rocks, to the Holmes 
Islands. The Steep Holmes represents the rugged truncated apex 
of a submarine mountain, whose abruptly precipitous sides are 
only accessible at one proper landing place. Amidst the shelving 
rocks and loose shingly stones, a few hundred yards from, and at 
an elevation of nearly 100 feet above, this spot, at the eastern end 
of the island, 
‘ There may ye see the Peony spread wide, — 
together with the scarcely less rare Allium ampeloprasum. The 
latter plant has effected a lodgment below the Light-house on the 
Flat Holmes ; but the Peony is altogether peculiar to the sister 
island.” 
“ The Patony was held in very high esteem by the ancient Greek physicians, 
but their praises are too extravagant for sober repetition. Among other super- 
stitions, they believed it to be of divine origin, an emanation from the moon, 
and that it shone during the night ; also that it had the power of driving away 
evil spirits, averting tempests, and protecting harvests from injury, &c. Neither 
are modern limes free from some remnants of these absurdities ; for the anodyne 
necklaces, still sold to prevent convulsions in children, and to ease dentition, 
are made ol beads turned from the root of this species. Its antispasmodic powers, 
though often dwelt on, are very feeble, and it is chiefly to be regarded as a nau- 
seous and acrid bitter. 
The seeds of Pceonia officinalis are said to be emetic and cathartic ; and the 
roots of P. anomala, and P. albiflora, are, according to Pallas, eaten in 
Siberia, either simply boiled, or as an ingredient in soups. The seeds of the 
latter are also, he says, used in the same country instead of lea.” See Bur- 
nett’s Outlines of Botany, p. 842. 
