DIDYNAMIA. ANGIOSPERMIA. Orobanghe. 743 
OROBAN 7 CHE. # Cal. of two lobed leaves : Bloss. gaping : 
Germen resting on a gland : Caps . one-celled, two- 
valved, many-seeded.f 
(1) Floral-leaves solitary. 
O. ma'jor. Stem tinbranched, pubescent ; (blossom inflated; upper 
lip nearly entire; lower in three equal segments : stamens smooth: 
style downy. E.) 
Curt. 232— (E. Bot. 421. E.)— Kniph. 7 — Tourn. 81, Obranche — Riv. Mon. 
89. 1 , Orobanche—Ger. 1130. 2—Pet. 69. 10— Park. 229. 1 . a — Matth. 
536— Louie, ii. 24. 1. 
(Whole plant of a dull purplish brown, becoming dry and membranous. E.) 
Root large, fleshy, oval, scaly, (with a few fibres. E.) Leaves none. 
Stem eight to twelve inches high, angular, clothed with dry scattered 
scales. Flowers (in a spike of fifteen to twenty, large, a little incurved, 
E.) cylindrical, brownish rust-coloured. Summit two yellow, globular 
lobes. Seeds exceedingly numerous. Relh. Floral-leaves spear-shaped, 
solitary^ tapering. 
Common Broom-rape. (Irish: Muchog. Welsh: Corn yr afr; Paladr 
hir. E.) Parasitic, in dry ground, on the roots chiefly of diadelphous 
plants, as Spartium scoparium , Genista tinctoria, Trifolium, Ulex, Orobus 
tuberosus , Hieracium sabaudum and Centaurea Scabiosa. Also in corn¬ 
fields in a sandy soil, which have probably had Broom growing on them. 
Broom Hills, very frequent. Mr. Woodward. Shrawley Wood, Wor¬ 
cestershire. Mr. Ballard. On a dry bank, near Clifton upon Teme, Wor¬ 
cestershire. Dr. Stokes. Raby Park, Durham. Mr. Robson. (Near Allerton 
Hall, in the road to Liverpool. Mr. Robert Roscoe. In Scots Wood 
Dean, Northumberland. Winch Guide. Near Burntisland. Hooker. El. 
Scot. Ken-wood, Hampstead, Middlesex; Little Baddow Common, Essex. 
Mr. W. Christy. Walls of Conway Castle, opposite the Suspension 
Bridge. B. Botfield, Esq. By the side of a foot-path at the edge of the 
cliffs west of Bitton, near Teignmouth, July, 1819. E.) P. May—June. 
( O. caryophyllacea. Sm. Linn. Tr. vol. iv. p. 169. greatly resembling the above 
in habit and size, and not very clearly ascertained to be specifically distinct, 
has been observed by Mr. G. E. Smith on the roots of Galium Mollugo , 
near Sandgate in Kent, and eastward to Dover, who further remarks that 
* (So called, according to Theophrastus, from opojSos, the Orobus, Tare, or Vetch, and 
ayxw, to strangle, (q. d. Strangle Tare ); from its supposed power of destroying the plant on 
which its grows. Such at least is the literal translation, though there is reason to believe 
the Greek compound was applied by Theophrastus to some species of climbing plant, and 
that our Orobanche rather accords with the description by Dioscorides and Pliny. In the 
former instance the injury is effected by mechanical constriction ; in the latter, by exhaus¬ 
tion of the juices of the plant from which it derives its principal nutriment. E.) 
*|* In Linn. Tr., vol. 4, will be found a paper by the Rev. Charles Sutton, illustrative of 
this singular tribe of plants ; by which it appears that they are not entirely parasitic, but 
acquire no small portion of sustenance from the soil by means of radical fibres. These 
plants have an acrid, astringent taste, and are rejected by all kinds of animals except the 
minuter Cimices and Thripses. They are acotyledonous : for when a seed has attached itself 
to the root of a living plant, it swells into a pellucid squamose gem or bulb ; and after 
throwing out around the point of adhesion several tender fibres, it pushes up at once into 
a perfect plant, without any lateral lobes or cotyledons, the capitidum resembling a young 
head of asparagus. This process is well represented in Linn, Tr. vol. 4, t, 17. E.) 
