2788
OROBUS niger.
Black Bitter-vetch.
DIADELPHIA Decandria.
Gen. Char. Style linear, nearly cylindrical, downy
above. Calyx obtuse at the base, oblique at the
mouth, its upper segments deeper and shorter.
(Leaves without tendrils.)
Spec. Char. Leaves pinnate, with 3—6 pairs of
elliptic leaflets. Stipules linear-lanceolate, acute.
Stem branched, angular, erect.
S y n . Orobus niger. Linn. Sp. PI. 1028. Curt. Bot.
Mag. t. 2261. Hook. Scot. P. II. 267. Sm.
Engl. FI. v. 4. 270. Hook. Brit. FI. ed. 2' v. 1.
319.
^_f ^HIS pretty species of Bitter-vetch, long cultivated in
our gardens, and a native of the Continent of Europe, from
Spain and Portugal in the south to Sweden and Norway
in the north, was nevertheless unknown, as an indigenous
plant of Great Britain, till Mr. Thomas Drummond, now
so successfully engaged in exploring the Botany of Texas,
discovered it, a few years since, growing wild in the romantic
den of Airly, about 12 miles west of Torfen. Subsequently,
Dr. MacLachlan has found it at Craiganain, a
rock within 2 miles of Moy House, Inverness-shire. Its
flowering season is June and July.
Root long and tapering, and, like that of O. luberosus,
sweet to the taste. Stem 1—2 feet high, erect, a good deal
branched, and angular. Leaves like all the rest of the
plant, glabrous, pinnated, with from 4—6 pairs of elliptical
leaflets, an inch or an inch and a half long, in our native