Flora Medica

APIACEJE OR UMBELLIFER^:.foliage, stalks, and even the flowers, are all of a bright green.Leaves2 or 3 feet wide, biternate, or somewhat bipinnate, very smooth ;leaflets ovate-lanceolate, acute, cut, sharply and closely serrated,partly decurrent, the odd one deeply 3-lobed. Footstalks at the baseexcessively dilated and tumid, pale and rather membranous, with manyribs. Umbels, both general and partial, nearly globose, the rays ofboth very numerous, spreading, nearly smooth. General bracts few,linear, deciduous, often wanting; partial about 8, linear-lanceolate,short; occasionally enlarged, leafy and notched. Fruit 3J lineslong, pale clay colour, oblong, with the ridges sharp, thin, elevated,and rather hard, the dorsal ones approximated and forming roundedchannels between them. Root fragrant, bitterish, pungent, sweetwhen first tasted, but leaving a glowing heat in the mouth." TheLaplanders extol it not only as food but medicine. In coughs, hoarseness,and other pectoral disorders they eat the stalks roasted in hotashes ; they also boil the tender flowers in milk till it attains the consistenceof an extract which they use to promote perspiration incatarrhal fevers and to strengthen the stomach and bowels in diarrhoea.The leaves seeds and roots are certainly good aromatic tonics. S. and C.OPOPONAX.Calyx obsolete. Petals roundish entire rolled inwards, witha rather acute lobe. Disk broad and thick. Styles very short.Fruit flattened at the back,with a dilated convex border. Halffruitswith 3 very fine dorsal ridges, and no distinct lateral ones.Vittae 3 to each channel, 6-10 to the commissure. A perennial,with a thick root, and a rough stem. Leaves bipinnate ;segments unequally cordate, crenated, obtuse. Umbels compound.Involucre both universal and partial, few-leaved.Flowers yellow.96. O:chironumKochumb.96. Daprodr.iv.170. N.andE.handb. iii. 56. Pastinaca Opoponax Linn. sp. 376. Waldst.and Kit. iii. t. 21 1 . Fl. Gr. t. 288. Woodv. t. 1 1 3. S. and C.ii. t. 98. Ferula Opoponax Rom. and Sch. syst.vi. 597.TldvaKts ypetK\tiov, Dioscorid. Dry hills, margins of fields,thickets upon the coast in the south of Europe and Asia Minor.A plant 6 or 7 feet high, resembling a parsnip, of a dull yellowishgreen colour. Stem strongly furrowed. Leaves from 1 to 2 feet longand more, flat, regularly bipinnate, with ovate-cordate leaflets, whichare usually oblique at the base, often confluent, and surrounded with acartilaginous crenated border; the petioles hispid. Umbels proliferous,ofa small number of long slender rays, and with several firm ovate-oblong,undivided bracts; partial umbels spreading, with no involucre or onlythe rudiments of one. Flowers yellow. Calyx inconspicuous. Stylesrather short and stout. Fruit 4 lines long, oblong, flat, with a palethickened border ;dorsal ridges filiform, but little raised, much palerthan the dull brown broad flat distinctly vitiated channels; commissuredull brown, with a closed elevated filiform raphe. A milky juiceexudes from the root when wounded, and hardens into opoponax, a fetidgum resin similar in its effects to assafcetida. 44