1. PHYTOLÁCCA, Tourn. Pokeweed.
Calyx of 5 rounded and petal like sepals. Stamens 5–30. Ovary of 5–12 carpels, united in a ring, with as many short separate styles, in fruit forming a depressed globose 5–12-celled berry, with a single vertical seed in each cell. Embryo curved in a ring around the albumen.—Tall and stout perennial herbs, with large petioled leaves, and terminal racemes which become lateral and opposite the leaves. (Name compounded of φυτόν, plant, and the French lac, lake, in allusion to the crimson coloring matter which the berries yield.)
1. P. decándra, L. (Common Poke or Scoke. Garget. Pigeon-Berry.) Stamens and styles 10.—Low grounds. July–Sept.—A smooth plant, with a rather unpleasant odor, and a very large poisonous root, often 4–6´ in diameter, sending up stout stalks at length 6–9° high; calyx white; ovary green; berries in long racemes, dark-purple and filled with crimson juice, ripe in autumn.
Order 89. POLYGONÀCEÆ. (Buckwheat Family.)
Herbs, with alternate entire leaves, and stipules in the form of sheaths (ocreæ, these sometimes obsolete) above the swollen joints of the stem; the flowers mostly perfect, with a more or less persistent calyx, a 1-celled ovary bearing 2 or 3 styles or stigmas, and a single erect orthotropous seed. Fruit usually an achene, compressed or 3–4-angled or -winged. Embryo curved or straightish, on the outside of the albumen, or rarely in its centre. Stamens 4–12, inserted on the base of the 3–6-cleft calyx. (Juice often acrid, sometimes agreeably acid, as in Sorrel; the roots, as in Rhubarb, sometimes cathartic.)
[*] Flowers involucrate; stamens 9; stipules none.
1. Eriogonum. Involucre several-flowered, with flowers exserted. Calyx 6-cleft.
[*][*] Flowers without involucre; stamens 4 to 8.
[+] Stipular sheaths manifest; ovule erect from the base of the cell.
[++] Sepals 4 or 6, the outer row reflexed, the inner erect and enlarging in fruit.