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S A N I C U L A europæa.
Wood Sanicle.
P E N T A N D R I A Digynia.
G en. C har. Umbels cluftered in little heads. Fruit
rough. Central flowers abortive.
Spec. Char. Radical leaves fimple. Flowers all feflile.
Sy n . Sanicula europæa. Linn. Sp. PI. 339. Hud/. FI.
An. x 10. With. Bot. Arr. 266. Relh. Cant. 108.
Sanicula five Diapenfia. Rail Syn. 221.
C o m m o n enough in woods, growing among dead leave*
of trees, and flowering with the firft heralds of fummer in May.
Gerarde fays jS it joyeth in a fat and fruitfull moift foile.” He
alfo remarks that “ it is ufed in potions which are called Vulne-
rarie potions, or wound drinkes, which make whole and found
all inward wounds and outward hurts.” Unhappily the experience
of mankind fince good Gerarde wrote has rather impaired
the credit of fuch fovereign medicines. Ignorance is
ever prone to confidence and wonder. The herb is bitter
and pungently aromatic, but feems to partake of that virofe
acrimony ufual in umbelliferous plants which “ joy in a fat
and moift foile,” and which is improved to a wholefome aromatic
flavour in dry elevated fituations.
The root is perennial, with long branched flefliy fibres.
Leaves moftly radical, elegantly lobed and ciliated, deep green
above, paler and more (hining beneath. Stem twelve or'eighteen
inches high, but little branched, furrowed. Flowers often red-
difh. The central flowers of each little head or umbel have no>
ftyles, but in their place a glandular nedlary (Withering). The
petals are all nearly equal -, they are wanting in the feed-bearing
flowers, as Scopoli remarks.
jllgfe.