W:V [ 2440 ]
TORDYL IUM officinale.
Small Hart-wort.
PENTANDRIA Digynia.
G en. C har. Invol. long and undivided. Corolla
radiant. Flowers all hermaphrodite. Fruit nearly
orbicular, flattened, notched in the margin.
Spec. Char. Pa rtia l involucrum about as long as
the flowers. Leaflets ovate, cut, crenate. Stem
downy.
Syn . T o rd y lium officinale. Linn. Sp. P L 3 4 5 . Sm.
FI. B r it. 2 9 4 . Huds. 1 1 2 ? With. 286 ? Hull,
ed. 2. 7 8 .
T . sive Seseli Creticumminus. R a il Syn. ed. 2. 102.
T . Narbonense minus. D ill, in Raii Syn. 206,
with an erroneous place of growth.
Seseli creticum minus. Ger. em, 1050.
A l t h o u g h tins plant be no longer found about Isle-
worth, where Mr. Doody observed it in Ray’s time, the latter
was too accurate a botanist to leave us in any doubt as to its
identity, though Dillenius, in his edition of the Synopsis,
transposed, the places of growth of this and T. maximum,
t. 1173. The latter is the Oxford plant, and was found by the
late Mr. Gotobed, a few years ago, near Eton.
The present is . an annual of more humble growth, whose
stem is clothed with fine, dense, soft, deflexed hairs, not rigid
bristles. The leaflets are, as Ray says, roundish, not lanceolate,
except the uppermost, and grow on long stalks. Flowers
white or flesh-coloured; their two outer petals remarkably
radiant, one lobe of each being disproportionately large, very
different from those of T. maximum. The seed moreover has
a very elegant, thick, crenate border.
W e have of course been obliged to describe an exotic spechnen.