138 
No. 23. 
Pan ax elegans, F.v.M. 
The Black Pencil Cedar. 
(Natural Order ARALIACE^E.) 
Botanical description. —Genus, Panax, Linn. ( Nothopanax, Miq.) 
Calyx-border.— Usually slightly prominent, truncate or shortly 5-toothed. 
Petals. —Five, valvate, often cohering at the tips, especially in female flowers. 
Stamens. —Five. 
Disk. —Broad and not thick, the margin sometimes prominent. 
Ovary .—Two or rarely 3-celled. 
Styles. —Two, rarely 3, at first erect and sometimes cohering, afterwards distinct and recurved. 
Fruit. —Flattened, the endocarp hardened into 2 distinct pyrenes not furrowed, sometimes 
2-ribbed on the dorsal edge, the exocarp more or less succulent. 
Albumen.— Even. 
Trees or shrubs. 
Leaves. —Pinnately or digitately compound or rarely a few on the same tree or bush undivided. 
Flowers. —Often polygamous, articulate on the pedicels, in umbels or rarely in heads or racemes, 
the umbels or racemes paniculate or rarely solitary. (B.F1. iii, 380.) 
Botanical description. —Species, P. elegans, P. Muell. in Trans. Phil. Inst. Viet. 
II, 63. 
A large and handsome tree, glabrous, except the inflorescence. 
Leaves. —Large, simply or doubly pinnate, the rhachis articulate. 
Leaflets. —Pctiolate, opposite, ovate, acuminate, entire, coriaceous, shining, often 3 or 4 in. long. 
Flowers. —Singly pedicellate in little racemes, which are very numerous, and arranged in a large 
terminal divaricately-branched panicle, the rhachis minutely hoary pubescent. 
Calyx-border. —Shortly prominent, entire. 
Petals and styles of the genus. 
Disk. —Not prominent. 
Fruits. —About 3 lines broad, the endocarp or pyrenes hard. (B.F1. iii, 383.) 
Botanical Name. — Panax, from two Greek words— Pan, all, and akos, a 
remedy—in allusion to the miraculous virtues attributed to the Ginseng ( Panax 
quinquefolio). Panacea (Greek, panakeia), a universal remedy, has the same meaning. 
Elegans, Latin, handsome, in allusion to the beauty of the tree. 
