496 OCTANDRIA. TRIGYNIA. Polygonum. 
ish or reddish. E.) Pistils half cloven. Fruit-stalks smooth. Spikes 
egg-oblong, upright. Flowers of a bright rose-colour. Germen oval and 
flatted, or three-square. Style often cloven half way down into three 
parts, and when this is the case, the germen and seed are three-square. 
Seed egg-shaped, and slightly convex on one side, or three-square. Curt. 
Leaves nearly smooth, but with very minute bristles lying along the edge. 
Leaf-scales sheathing, ribbed. Common fruit-stalks springing from the 
sheathing leaf-scales at the joints of the stem. Flowers three, or four 
together, included in a membranous fringed sheath, on short fruit-stalks 
of different lengths, which are again enclosed by membranous sheaths. 
Blossom segments concave, unequal. Stamens sometimes five and seven. 
Anthers occasionally two upon one filament. Summits globular. 
(Varieties with hoary leaves have been described, but these we apprehend 
to be occasioned by a diseased state of the pipit. E.) 
Dead or Spotted Persicaria. Spotted Snakeweed. (Irish: Glun - 
negh Dearg. Welsh: Elinog goch. E.) Ditches, on the side of water, 
and not unfrequently in corn-fields. A. July—Sept.* 
P. (lapathifo'lium. E.) Pistils two: stipulse not fringed: fruit- 
stalks rough with glands : seeds concave on each side. Curt. 
Curt. —( j E. Bot. 1382. E.)— Lob. 1c. 315. 1— Pet. 3. 11— Fuchs. 630 —Trag. 
91— J. B. iii. 779. 2— Lonic. i. 162. 1— Bod. 608— Ger.Em. 445.2— Park, 
857. 2— H. Ox. v. 29. row 2. 2. 
(Whole plant paler, more robust and succulent, than the preceding ; one to 
two feet high, but variable in luxuriance. Flowers often nearly white. 
E.) Stem cylindrical, smooth. Leaves egg-spear-shaped, smooth above; 
the uppermost dotted underneath with minute glands, the lowermost 
covered with a kind of down; sometimes with, and sometimes without 
spots. Leaf-stalks hairy underneath, with a slight roughness to the 
touch. Leaf-scales more strongly ribbed than in P. Persicaria. Fruit- 
stalks beset with minute yellowish globular glands, on exceedingly short 
foot-stalks. Spikes oval, when the seeds are ripe drooping. Flowers 
greenish, set close together. Seed flat, with a depression in the middle 
of each side, sometimes obtusely triangular. Curt. 
Pale-flowered Snakeweed. (Pale Persicaria. Welsh: Costog y 
dom ; Llys y dom. E.) P. lapathifolium. Linn. Sm. Relh. Sibth. Hook. 
Grev. Willd., but not adopted here without regret, the trivial pallidum 
of our author being peculiarly characteristic. P. Pensylvanicum. Curt. 
Huds. Ed. 1. not of Linn. E.) Dunghills, corn-fields, and sometimes by 
the side of water. A. Aug.f 
* Its taste is slightly acid and astringent. Woollen cloth dipped in a solution of alum 
obtains a yellow colour from this plant. Goats, sheep, and horses eat it. Cows and 
swine refuse it. Linn. (This, and some other species, are occasionally introduced into 
gardens, their flowers and general habit being far from inelegant. E.) 
f Sparrows and other small birds are very fond of the seeds of all the varieties. Curt. 
(They are also acceptable to partridges. Called in the fens Willow-weed , where it is one 
of the worst weeds they have. It grows freely on all loose and deep soils, and on marshy 
lands, though it be scarcely known to the cultivators of clay, and is equally rare on turnip- 
lands. The seeds very much infest the fen corn. They may be skreened out, and are 
worth purchasing to feed and entice wild fowl at decoys. Pigs will thrive on them boiled. 
In the fens this seed is often so predominant as to usurp the crop. Mr. Holdich advises, 
for its extirpation, after successive crops of oats, wheat, and grass, to “roll well, and weed 
well; and if you have not then completely destroyed this nuisance, you have done the next 
best thing -—hindered it from growing .” E.) 
