64 Psoralea melilotoides.
P la n t about twelve or eighteen inches high. Root perennial. Stem
erect, somewhat square, grooved, and strigose. Stipules on the stem
only, linear-lanceolate, acuminated and dotted. Leaves alternate,
temate, petiolate, covered with minute glands, slightly pubescent: pubescence
appressed to the disk: central leaf on a larger petiole than
the side ones. Spikes linear-lanceolate, elongating in fruit, bracteate.
Bracts large, broad, heart-shaped, acuminate, dotted and deciduous.
Flowers campanula-purple, pedicellate, upright. Calix pubescent,
deeply five-cleft. Legume one-seeded, naked, as long as the calix,
covered with transverse, serpentine rugae. Style persistent. Grows
in Carolina and Florida; and, according to Mr. Nuttall, common in
the open forests of Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Flowers in July.
Fig. t. Represents the whole plant except the root, in flower.
2. The rachis of the spike, in fruit.—Both the size of nature.
The leaves, as in the outline fig. 3. are often twice the size of those
represented in fig. 1. the type of which flowered from seeds of Mr.
Nuttall.