STUDY OF BOTANY. 
25 
NATURAL HISTORY. 
ARTICLE IX.—ON THE STUDY OF BOTANY. 
ON UMBELLATI FLOWERS. 
BY F. F. ASHFORD. 
Figure to yourselves, my youthful friends, a long stem, pretty 
straight, with leaves placed alternately upon it, generally cut fine, 
and embracing at their base, branches which grow from their axils. 
From the upper part of the stem as from a centre, grow several pe¬ 
dicles or rays, which, spreading circularly and regularly like the ribs 
of an umbrella, crown the stem with a kind of basin more or less 
open. Sometimes these rays leave a sort of void in the middle, and 
in that case are more exactly like the hollow of a basin. Sometimes 
also this middle is furnished with other rays that are shorter, which 
rising less obliquely, form with the others nearly the figure of a half 
sphere having the convex side uppermost. 
Each of these rays is terminated, not by a flower, but by another 
set of smaller rays, crowning each of the former exactly as the first 
crown the stem. 
Here then are two similar and successive ranks, one of large rays 
terminating the stem, another of smaller rays like the others, each of 
them terminating the great ones. The rays of the little umbels are 
no farther subdivided, but each of them is a pedicle or footstalk to a 
little flower. 
If you can frame an idea of the figure I have just described, you 
will understand the dispositions of the flowers in the tribe of umbel¬ 
liferous or umbellate plants. 
Though this regular disposition of the fructification be striking, 
and sufficiently constant in all this tribe, it is not that, however, 
which constitutes the character of umbellate plants. This is derived 
from the structure of the flower itself. 
The umbellate plants have a superior corolla of five petals, called 
regular, though frequently the two outmost petals of the flower at the 
extremity of the umbel are larger than the three others. The form 
of these petals varies in the different genera, but it is usually cordate 
or heart-shaped. They are very narrow next the germ, but gradu¬ 
ally widen towards the end, which is emarginate or slightly notched, 
or else they finish in a point, which, being folded back, gives the pe¬ 
tal the air of being emarginate. 
Between each petal is a stamen, and the anther generally standing 
