RUMEX pulcher.
Fiddle Dock.
HEXANDRIA Trigynia.
Gen. Char. Cal. 3-leaved. Petals 3, closed. Seed ],
superior, naked, triangular. Stigmas many-cleft.
Spec. Char. Valves toothed, one of them bearing a
larger grain than the rest. Radical leaves fiddleshaped.
Stem smooth, straggling.
Syn. Rumex pulcher. Linn. Sp. PI. 477. Sm. FI.
Brit. 393. Buds. 153. With. 3 5 6 . Hull. 78.
Relh. 143. Abbot. 82.
Lapathum pulchrum bononiense sinuatum. Rad
Syn. 142.
F o u n d in dry gravelly pastures and waste ground, flowering
about August. The root is perennial.
The stems grow in a spreading straggling manner, partly
procumbent, and are much branched, divaricated, striated,
smooth to the touch. Radical leaves on long stalks,
obtuse, slightly notched, contracted in the middle, so as to
represent, more or less accurately, the form of a fiddle, or
some sort of guitar; the stem-leaves are'small, narrow, and
undivided. The branches form long leafy clusters of green
pendulous flowers, with yellow antheras. The enlarged petals
(or valves of the fruit) are deeply and sharply toothed, each
bearing an oblong reddish grain, which in one of them is
commonly larger than in the rest. Seed acutely angular,
smooth and polished.