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Helenium autumnale. 95
serrate, acute, and often acuminate, serratures irregular. Costa
and veins conspicuous, pistachio-green above, siskin-green underneath.
Flowers varying in size, numerous, terminal and axillary,
some very large, an inch and three-quarters in diameter, including rays,
others an inch, and some only three-quarters of an inch. Peduncles
swelling as they approach the base of the calix. Ray-petals gamboge-
yellow, about sixteen or seventeen in number, sometimes twenty,
three or four-toothed; teeth obtuse, sometimes deeply cleft and
acute. Calix segments linear, numerous. Disk hemispherical, greenish
yellow. Inhabits the margins of rivers and smaller waters from
Canada to Georgia. Flowering in September—common.
The genus Helenium belongs to N. America, and received this
name from Linnseus after he had referred the original Helenium
to Inula. Dioscorides describes ea*»»*, which professor Martyn informs
us was called in honour of Helen, consort of Menelaus, who
cultivated a plant, according to Hesychius, which destroyed serpents;
according to other ancient writers, “ it sprung from her tears.”
That the ancient plant alluded to, and of which this history is related,
is Inula helenium, or common Elecampane, seems to be acknowledged
by all modern writers. The strong resemblance between
the genus of which a species is here figured, and that of Elecampane,
induced Linnseus to call it Helenium. In the Hortus Cliffortia-
nus where he first described it, he called it Helenia, and this termination
Gaertner has retained. In the Species Plantarum and other