HEX AND RI A. POLYGYNIA. Alisma. 
463 
six or more together, upright or hanging down, (contracted about the 
middle, expanding at the mouth. E.) Blossom scored, yellowish green, 
often tinged with purple. Capsule egg-shaped, blunt, pendant. Woodw. 
Birth-wort. Woods and hedges. Wood two miles from Thorndon, 
Essex, and in Cambridgeshire. Blackstone. Near Maidstone. Hudson. 
Surston, Suffolk. Mr. Woodward. (Among the ruins of Carrow Abbey, 
Norwich. Rev. C. Sutton, in Bot. Guide. Near the walls of Godstow 
Nunnery. Sibthorp. Near Kencot, Oxfordshire. Rev. Dr. Goodenough. 
Chaddesley, near Kidderminster. Miss Rawlins, in Purt. E.) 
P. July—Sept.* 
POLYGYNIA. 
ALIS'MA. Calyx three-leaved: Petals three : (Caps, six or 
more, generally single, seeded. E.) 
A. plant a'go. Leaves egg-shaped, acute, (on leaf-stalks: capsules 
obtusely triangular. E.) 
Curt. 318— (E. Bot. 837. E.)— Kniph. 12— FI. Dan. 561—Trag. 226. 2— 
Lonic. 142. 4— Fuchs. 42— J. B. iii. 787. 3—Matth. 482— Dod. 606. 1— 
Lob. Obs. 160. 1 —Ger. Em. 417. 1 —Park. 1245. 1— Ger. 337. 1 —Pet. 
43. 6. 
(Floiver-stalk rising two or three feet above the water, panicled. E.) 
Fruit-stalks mostly six in a whirl, alternately longer and shorter; their 
subdivisions the same. Stackh. Stems and branches with three blunt 
angles. Leaves (all radical, on long stalks, E.) with eight ribs, two of 
them near each edge. Blossom fully expanded about four in the after¬ 
noon ; petals ragged at the end, shrivelling, pale, reddish purple, yellow 
at the base. Capsules about eighteen ; egg-shaped, (ranged side by side 
in a circle. Sm. E.) 
(Var. 2. Lanceolata. Narrow-leaved : being lengthened out by deep or 
running water. Not more than an inch or two in height. Leaves nearly 
strap-shaped, often without any defined stalk. 
A. lanceolata. With. Sym. A. plantago, var. j3. Huds. With. Ed. 2. Sm. 
Plantago aquatica longifolia. Dill, in R. Syn. 257. Welsh: Amrywiaeth 
culddail. E.) 
* 7'ipula pennicornis fecundates the flowers. Schreb. (The anthers being situated 
under the stigma, could scarcely fulfil their function without such extraneous assistance. 
The little insect being entangled in the hairy tube of the blossom, in its efforts to escape 
performs the important office of anointing the stigma with the pollen. And thus in other 
instances, as Cowper remarks, 
- t( When summer shines, 
The bee transports the fertilizing meal 
From flower to flower, and even the breathing air 
Wafts the rich prize to its appointed use.” 
The root is aromatic and bitter, but not ungrateful to the palate. It has been used in the 
Portland powder for the cure of gout, but not without producing effects more formidable 
than the original disease. As a warm, stimulating medicine it still retains a place in 
some Pharmacopoeias. By the ancients great virtues were attributed to it, as appears 
from Dioscorides, Galen, and Pliny. An opinion is said to prevail in France, that the 
produce of vineyards in which this plant abounds becomes deteriorated in quality. E.) 
