_Ginseng Family_
Herbs, shrubs or trees with alternate or verticillate leaves, and
flowers in umbels, heads or panicles; calyx tube adnate to the ovary;
petals usually 5, sometimes cohering together; stamens as many as the
petals and alternate with them; seeds flattened, somewhat 3-angled with
a coloured, fleshy covering.
Herbs; leaves compound. =Aralia.=
Shrubs; leaves simple. =Echinopanax.=
[Sidenote: =Aralia nudicaulis= L. _Wild Sarsaparilla._]
Acaulescent or nearly so, rootstock long. Leaf usually solitary,
arising with the peduncle from a very short stem; petiole erect, 6—12
inches long, primary divisions of the leaf slender, stalked, pinnately
3—5 foliate; leaflets sessile or short-stalked, oval or ovate,
acuminate, rounded at the base, finely serrate, 2—5 inches long, often
hairy on the veins beneath. Flowers on a peduncle usually shorter than
the leaves; umbels usually three, nearly round, composed of numerous
small greenish flowers.
In rich woods throughout the region, flowering in July.
[Sidenote: =Echinopanax horridum= (Smith) Dec. and Planch. _Devil’s
Club._]
Very prickly throughout; stems erect from a decumbent base 4—12 feet
high, leafy at the top. Leaves roundish, cordate, prickly on both
sides, palmately lobed, more or less hairy beneath, 6—24 inches long.
Flowers greenish-white in a dense terminal paniculate umbel; petals
5; stamens 5, alternate with the petals; fruit berry-like, laterally
compressed, bright scarlet when ripe.
An ornamental though very prickly shrub, in moist rich woods throughout
the region, sparingly in the Rockies, west of the divide, but very
abundant in the Selkirks where it frequently forms dense impenetrable
thickets, flowering in early summer.
[Illustration: Echinopanax horridum (Smith) Dec. & Planch. (½ Nat.)
Devil’s Club.]