Orontium aquaticum.
boge-yellow, bearing about sixty flowers, of an unpleasant heavy
odour. Germ angular, depressed, greenish. Stamens short, yellow.
Seeds viviparous, sprouting as soon as they fall on the mud or
in the water, generally four in number, and situated under the broad
flower scales which are most conspicuous on the lowest flowers of
the spadix. Filaments also short, flat, diverging from the exterior
margin of the germ. Style absent. Stigma also wanting, or discernible
only in the form of a minute puncture which rises to a more
conspicuous and hard circular base, as the inflorescence advances.
Leaves sheathing each other by their petioles, lanceolate-elliptical,
terminating abruptly in an acute point. Costa very thick and
succulent. Upper disk deep duck-green, lower bluish, sometimes
yellowish-green, glabrous, and shining. Petioles cylindrical. Every
part of the plant shining except the upper disk of the leaves and
spadix. Younger leaves closely convoluted and proceeding from
the sheathing bosom of the older ones. During the flowering state
the leaves seldom exceed six or eight inches in length, but after the
plant is in fruit, they attain near twelve inches. Grows on the
marshy borders of tide-water rivers and creeks, and on the lutu-
lent margins of ditches and ponds which the tide reaches, throughout
the union, flowering in April and May. Pursh observed a variety
with almost linear leaves, in the salt marshes near New York.
The Indians of North America are said to have roasted the roots
of this plant, and eaten them as an article of food. In their uncooked
S
Orontium aquaticum. 3
state, however, they are supposed to be poisonous. The seeds
well dried and boiled in water, give out a fecula; but in their crude
state they are very acrid.
The genus of which the only North American species is here
figured, is the .(.»n*» of the Greeks, but the etymology of the word is
entirely lost in obscurity. The name is said to have belonged to an
herb used in baths or fomentations for the jaundice; and we are told
by Dr. Smith, that some have suspected it to be a corruption of the
word Origanum, while Professor Martyn thinks it likely that the word
comes from •£*«, to see, a notion founded on a gratuitous assertion
of the plant being serviceable to the eye-sight.
The Orontium Japonicum is the only other known species of this
genus. It is a native of Japan.
The plate represents Orontium aquaticum of its natural size, in
flower.