Flora Medica

APIACEJE OR UMBELLIFBR^;.compound. Umbels numerous. Both involucres many-leaved.Flowers yellow.122. C. odontalgica Pall. itin. ed. gall, in 8vo. app. n. 309. t. 78.f. i. DC. prodr. iv. 236. Fee cours. ii. 208. The driestdeserts of Siberia, the Crimea and Caucasus.Leaves decompound, hoary ; segments linear, hoary, somewhattrifid. Stem naked. Both involucres with a few undivided bracts.Fruit oblong rather compressed from the back, scarcely furrowed.The root excites salivation, and is said to cure pain in the teeth.PRANGOS.Calyx a 5-toothed rim. Petals ovate, entire, involute at thepoint. Disk depressed, scarcely visible in the fruit. Fruitnearly taper with a broad commissure. Mericarps compressedat the back, with 5 smooth ridges, thick at the base, ending invertical membranous wings. Seed covered with numerous vittae.Perennial herbaceous plants. Stem taper. Leaves decompound,with linear segments. Umbels numerous. Flowersyellow.123. P. pabularia Lindl. in Journ. ray. inst. 1825. p. 7. DC.prodr. iv. 239. Fiturasulioon Indian Bazaars according toProfessor Royle. North of India near Draz, on the northernface of mountains.Root woody, perennial, with numerous clustered crowns, coveredover by the coarse fibrous bases of the leaves. Leaves supra-decompound,smooth, with linear entire or 3-parted segments ; petiolescrisp at the edge near the base. Flowers unisexual. Male umbelscompound, shorter than the leaves to which they are axillary; involucresboth general and partial, with membranous ovate-acuminatebracts. Calyx distinctly 5-toothed. Fruit compressed at the side,8-9 lines long, crowned with recurved styles, and with the corkyteeth of the permanent calyx. Half-fruits corky, with 5 large primaryridges, of which the dorsal are produced into a wavy wing, and coarselytuberculated at the sides ;commissure narrower than the half-fruit.Seed covered with indefinite colourless vittae, both on the back andcommissure. Leaves dried, and eaten by cattle as winter fodder ; itseffects heating, producing fatness quickty, destructive of the Fasciolahepatica in sheep. Moorcroft.I introduce this plant for the following reason Professor :Roylesuggests that this was one of the kinds of Sylphion of the Greeks :that described by Arrian as growing only with pines on Paropamisus,where it was browsed on by numerous flocks of sheep and cattle." Lieut. Burnes, crossing in the direction of Alexander's route, foundthis in the same situation, greedily cropped' by sheep and even eaten byhis fellow-travellers (as is also mentioned by Kinnier); and he supposesit to be the Silphium of Alexander's historians." Heeren appliesthe greater portion of the remarks that remain of Ctesias respecting theIndians, to the high land of Tartary, where grew the Silphium grazed onby innumerable flocks of sheep and goats. Royle 's I/lustrations, p. 230.56