C A U C A L I S nodofa.
Knotted Caucalis.
P £ N T A N D R 1A Digynia.
Gen. Char. Corolla radiate. Fruit nearly oval,
ftriated, rough with rigid bridles. Some flowers
abortive.
Spec. Char. Umbels lateral, Ample, nearly feffile.
S y n . Caucalis nodofa. Hudf. FI. An. 1 14. IVith. Bot.
■ Arr. 273. Relh. Cant. 111. Sibth. Oxon. 93.
C. nodofa echinato femine. Rail Syn. 220.
Tordylium nodofum. Linn. Sp. PI. 346.
C o M M O N on banks and about the borders of fields, ef-
pecially on a gravelly or calcareous foil, flowering from May to
July, after which its dry {talks and heads of feeds remain for a
confiderable time, and become bleached at length by the weather.
Root annual. Stems proftrate, branched, leafy, ftriated,
roughifh with reflexed hairs. Leaves bipinnate, and Iharply cut;
oppofite to each of which, and often partly embraced by its
fheathing footftalk, ftands a fmall Ample umbel of feveral
minute, white orreddifh, fcarcely radiating, flowers, each on a
very {hort flowerftalk, and furrounded by linear hairy in-
volucra. The germens and feeds, both in the Linnsean fpe-
cimens and in ours, are all rough, the inner ones with warty
points, the outermoft, and efpecially on their outfide, with long-
ifti, ftraight, rough, rigid hairs, as in other fpecies of Caucalis,
to which genus (and not to Tordylium) this plant is furely to
be referred upon that account, whether it has any abortive flowers
or not. Future obfervations muft decide whether the
fmoother feeds o f the centre are ever really abortive, or deftitute
of a vegetative principle. Pra&ical obfervers of nature in the
country have it in their power to clear up many points of this
kind, relative to the moft common plants, which, if communicated
from time to time to thofe who have the means of making
them public, would materially advance the interefts of fcience.