84 Cleome dodecandra.
they approach the top of the plant. Flowers axillary, solitary, situated
on long,filiform, red peduncles. Petals often only three, heart-shaped,
white, supported by a filiform claw an eighth of an inch long; calix
leaves four; two of them lanceolate-linear, acute, lake-red; a third
ovate and lake-red; and the fourth larger, oblique, petaloid, threetoothed,
channelled, one-half white, the other rose-coloured. Stamens
lake-red, generally twelve in number. Germ large, yellow;
pistil filiform, rose-coloured. Silique sessile on the peduncle, yellowish
green, membranaceous and reticulated, obtuse, clammy, pubescent,
slightly corrugated towards apex and base. Seeds numerous,
small, round, flattened, brownish. Delights in sandy soil on the margins
of rivers. Grows from the northern to the southern section of
the Union. “ Common on the sandy shores of Lake Erie, near Buffalo
creek, also along the margins of the Mississippi and the Missouri.”
Nuttall. I have found it at the base of the Chickisalunga rocks
on the Susquehanna river, two miles above the town of Columbia,
growing on the sandy beach. Flowers in July. In its natural situations
it is quite pubescent, but becomes larger and nearly glabrous by cultivation.
It is possessed of medicinal properties, being like most of
the species of the genus, actively deleterious.
The generic term Cleome is derived from the Greek word k a h »,
claudo, and was adopted by Linnseus from Theod. Priscianos, or
Octavianus Prisianus, a medical writer of the fourth century. It contains
three North American and twenty-one foreign species. They
2
Cleome dodecandra. 85
are nearly all plants of offensive smell; a circumstance which indicates
in general a deleterious or narcotic power. The species here
noticed, is said by Schoepf and the late Professor Barton, to be a
good anthelmintic. For further information on this point, the reader
is referred to the third volume of my Vegetable Materia Medica of
the United States.
Fig. 1. The upper portion of the plant in flower and fruit.
2. A complete flower, separated.
3. A petal.
4. The petaloid calicine leaf.
5. The calix, germ and pistil, divested of the petaloid segment.
6. The calix, with stamens.
(All the size of nature.)