THE MEADOW-RUE— continued. 
pale yellow or cream-colour ; but in T.flavum they are of a brighter tint. It also 
deserves its name of Yellow Meadow-rue by the colour of its long, creeping, and 
branching rhizome. This has been used as a yellow dye. It is known in France as 
“ Rhubarbe des pauvres,” and is administered in rustic practice for jaundice or inter- 
mittent fevers. The former use is probably a relic of the doctrine of signatures, a 
sort of crude mediaeval homoeopathy ; and, though the plant shares the acridity of 
the Family, it may be doubted whether it is really of any efficacy. 
The plant is of frequent occurrence in wet places, throughout Britain, in fens, 
swamps, marshes, and river-banks, growing erect to a height of from two to four feet, 
its stem bright green and strongly furrowed. The leaves are bi-pinnate, with broadly 
wedge-shaped, trifid leaflets, each an inch or more in length, glabrous, and slightly 
paler on their under surfaces. The flowers are crowded together in small umbellate 
clusters on slender ascending branches, forming a sub-corymbose or pyramidal mass, 
the individual blossoms being erect. They are thus very conspicuous, though 
chiefly visited by flies. 
The five small greenish sepals fall off early ; but the many spirally-arranged 
stamens, the filaments of which are nearly twice as long as the sepals, spread out in 
sunny weather, so that the pollen is well exposed to the wind. The anthers in this 
species are not furnished with the apical points that occur in others. 
The carpels are from six to ten in number, arranged spirally. They vary 
somewhat in form, but are more or less ovoid, with eight longitudinal ribs, and are 
surmounted by a prominent sagittate stigma. Each contains a single pendulous 
ovule and forms a dry indehiscent achene. 
