CLXXXVIII. — THE WOOD SANICLE. 
Sanicula euro pee a Linne. 
I N general textbooks of plant-anatomy the umbel is treated as an indefinite, 
racemose, or centripetal inflorescence ; but in the Family Umbellifer<e it is not 
infrequently cymose, wholly or in part. This is the case in Hydrocotyle , Eryngium , 
and Sanicula , as can generally be seen from the centrifugal order in which the 
flowers open. 
The genus Sanicula comprises about a dozen species of slender, erect, perennial 
herbs, natives of the North Temperate Zone. They have short, stout, creeping 
rhizomes ; palmately-lobed leaves ; small sub-globose umbellules in irregular umbels 
with leafy bracts ; and an ovoid fruit covered with hooked spines. The sepals are 
leaf-like and as long as the petals, and the petals have a long incurved point, so that 
they appear deeply notched. The fruit is nearly circular in transverse section, 
exhibiting hardly a trace of ridges, but with numerous oil-vittae : the styles are 
slender and long ; and the seeds are flat on their commissural surface. 
Among the Umbellifer<e it is often difficult to be sure as to the presence of both 
stamens and carpels owing to the extremely protandrous character of the flowers in 
most genera. There is thus usually a first or staminate stage in which the anthers 
may develop, mature, and discharge their pollen before the styles are visible, so that 
the stage may be mistaken for a purely staminate flower ; and, later on, the anthers 
and even the filaments of the stamens may fall off when the flower passes into its 
second or carpellate stage, so that it in turn may be taken for an exclusively female 
flower. Thus perfect flowers may be readily mistaken for imperfect ones, and an 
inflorescence made up entirely of perfect flowers be described as polygamous. In 
the case of our Wood Sanicle ( Sanicula europtea Linne), the only European species 
of the genus, it would seem, unless several observers are in error, that the plant 
presents different arrangements of the essential organs in different localities. 
The Wood Sanicle, though often overlooked because growing in dense shade, 
is by no means an unattractive plant. Its leaves are particularly beautiful. They 
are mostly radical, long-stalked, sub-orbicular, and glossy, from one to three inches 
across, palmately three to five lobed, the lobes being wedge-shaped, three-lobed, and 
unequally serrate. The almost leafless peduncles are generally about a foot high 
and branch dichasially, with from two to five unequal and generally pinnatifid leafy 
bracts for the involucre. The flowers are white, or very frequently tinged with 
pink ; and, according to most authorities, the outer flowers in each head or umbellule 
are staminate and slightly stalked, whilst the centre and earlier-formed flowers are 
sub-sessile and perfect, though decidedly protandrous. Hermann Milller and Baron 
Kerner von Marilaun describe some ten to twenty outer staminate flowers to one to 
three perfect ones in the centre ; but while Muller describes these central flowers as 
