A large family, widely distributed, not abundant in the tropics;
usually strong-smelling herbs, remarkable for their aromatic oil,
mostly with hollow, grooved stems; leaves alternate, compound,
generally deeply cut, leaf-stalks often broadened at base; flowers
very small, usually in broad, flat-topped clusters, generally with
bracts; calyx usually a five-toothed rim around the top of the ovary;
petals five, small, usually with tips curled in, inserted on a disk,
which crowns the ovary and surrounds the base of the styles; stamens
five, with threadlike filaments and swinging anthers, also on the
disk; ovary two-celled, inferior, with two threadlike styles; fruit
two, dry, seedlike bodies, when ripe separating from each other, and
usually suspended from the summit of a slender axis, each body marked
with ribs, usually with oil-tubes between the ribs. The examination
of these oil-tubes in mature fruits, with a microscope, is necessary
to determine most of the genera and species, so description of genera
is omitted here, and botanists have added to the difficulties of the
amateur by giving almost every genus more than one name. The flowers
are much alike, yet the leaves often differ very much in the same
genus. Many kinds are poisonous, although others, such as Parsley,
Carrot, and Parsnip, are valuable food plants.
[Sidenote: _Peucédanum Euryptèra_
=Yellow
Spring
California=]
A fine robust plant, a foot or more tall, with stout, purplish stems
and smooth, crisp leaves, the lower ones with three leaflets, the
upper with five, and the teeth tipped with bristles. The flowers are
greenish-yellow and the main cluster measures four or five inches
across, with no bracts at base, but the small clusters have bracts.
The flowers are ugly, but the foliage is handsome and the seed vessels
richly tinted with wine-color, making the plant decorative and
conspicuous on the sea cliffs of southern California.
[Sidenote: =Turkey Peas=
_Orogènia linearifòlia_
=White
Spring
Northwest and Utah=]
A quaint little plant, only about three inches high, with a tuberous
root, spreading, slanting stems, and smooth leaves, all from the root,
with three, long, narrow leaflets; a reddish, stiff, papery scale
sheathing the stem at base. The minute, white flowers form a cluster
less than an inch across, without bracts, with a stout, ridged
flower-stalk and composed of from two to ten smaller clusters, with
small bracts; the anthers red. This grows in rich moist soil, in shady
valleys, on mountain ridges; in the Wasatch Mountains, sometimes on the
edge of the snow.
[Illustration: Turkey Peas--Orogenia linearifolia.
(fruit) Peucedanum Euryptera.]
[Sidenote: _Pterýxia Califórnica (Cymópterus)_
=Yellow
Summer
Cal., Oreg.=]
Over a foot tall, with very pretty, dark green foliage and rather ugly,
dull yellow flowers, in flat-topped clusters, three inches across. The
leaves are in a cluster at the root, with long leaf-stalks sheathing
at base, very finely cut and toothed, with stiffish points; the main
flower-cluster without bracts, but the smaller clusters with narrow
bracts.
[Sidenote: =Whisk-broom Parsley=
_Cogswéllia platycàrpa (Peucedanum simplex)_
=Yellow
Spring
Northwest and Utah=]
An odd-looking plant, for the foliage looks like pieces of a
whisk-broom stuck in the ground. It is six to fourteen inches tall,
with a thickish root and minute, sulphur-yellow flowers, forming a
flat-topped cluster, about two inches across, without bracts, and
composed of three to fifteen smaller clusters, with small bracts;
usually only the outermost flowers of both the large and small
clusters are fertile. The stem and leaves are stiff and sage-green,
the root-leaves with broad leaf-stems, reddish and papery at base,
sheathing the stem, and all the leaves cut into narrow divisions, not
much thicker than pine needles, folded together so that they appear to
be cylindrical. This grows on dry gravelly hills, at an altitude of
from six to eight thousand feet.
[Sidenote: _Leptotaènia multífida (Ferula)_
=Yellowish-green
Spring, summer
Northwest, Nev., Utah, New Mex.=]
A fine, stout plant, about two feet tall, with a thick, spindle-shaped
root and dark, rich-green, feathery foliage; the large leaves, over
a foot long, appearing smooth but really imperceptibly downy, finely
cut and lobed, with long, stout leaf-stalks; the small flowers,
yellowish-green or bronze-color, in flat-topped clusters, two or three
inches across, with few or no bracts, with tall, stout flower-stalks,
and composed of about eighteen, small clusters, forming round knobs,
with many bracts, on slender pedicels of various lengths. This grows in
rich soil and is conspicuous on account of its size and foliage.
[Illustration: Pteryxia Californica.