y y [ 2544 ]
X A N T H I U M strumarium.
Burweed, or• Small Burdock.
MONOECIA Pentandria.
Gen. Char, Male, Common Calyx imbricated. Florets
of one petal, funnel-shaped, five-cleft. Re,
ceptacle chaffy.
Female, Calyx two-leaved, two-flowered. Cor.
none. Drupa dry, muricated, cloven. Nut of
2 cells.
Spec. Char. Stem without thorns. Leaves heart-
shaped ; three-ribbed at the hase.
S yn, Xanthium strumarium. Linn. Sp. PL 1400,
Sm. FI. Brit. 1017. Buds'. 418. With. 283'
Hull ed. 2, 278. FI. Dan. t. 970.
X . seu Lappa minor. Rail Syn. 140.
Bardana minor. Ger. em. 809.
r-rL HIS plant, though it has been found in several places to the
south of London, is so rare that we have been forced to content
ourselves with garden specimens. It requires a rich, moist, or
dunghill, soil, where it produces its inelegant blossoms in August
and September, and is chiefly remarkable for the seed-vessels,
which appear afterwards in numerous axillary tufts, covered with
hooked spines. These attach themselves to the coats of animals,
like the heads of the real Burdock, Arctium, see t. 1228, 2478 •
which circumstance, added to the broad roughish leaves, three"
ribbed at their base, are enough to excuse the application of the
same English name to two plants so different in important characters.
Yet the Xanthium is one of those ambiguous genera
whose male flowers are compound, though not syngenesious, and
whose female ones are of so different a structure, as abundantly
to justify, and indeed to render indispensable, thq preservation of
{he Linnsean classes Monoecia and Dioecia.