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(Last Modified On 1/11/2013)
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(Last Modified On 1/11/2013)
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Genus
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SANICULA L.
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PlaceOfPublication
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Sp. P1. 235. 1753.
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Description
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Perennial or biennial, glabrous, or pubescent herbs from taproots, rootstocks, tubers, or fascicled roots; stems (sometimes obsolete) erect to rarely decumbent, simple or branched, the leaves petiolate, lobed or divided to decompound, rarely entire, the petiole sheathing; inflorescence of cymosely, umbellately, or panicu- lately arranged small heads subtended by a foliaceous involucre, the flowers perfect and staminate, white, yellow, or purple, the petals with an inflexed apex, the calyx very prominent and persistent; stylopodium lacking, the styles short to elongate, a carpophore lacking; fruit somewhat compressed laterally and densely tuberculate, scaly, or bristly, sessile or stipitate, the ribs obsolete, the vittae irregularly arranged, prominent to obscure; seed subterete or flattened dorsally, often sulcate beneath the vittae, its face flat to concave or sulcate.
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Habit
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herb
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Note
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Sanicula, another of the most distinctive genera of the family, consists of some 40 species distributed in a semi-cosmopolitan pattern, but concentrated in the temperate zones. The genus was monographed by Wolff in 1913 (Das Pflanzen- reich 61 [IV. 228]:1-305) and by Shan and Constance in 1951 (Univ. Calif. Publ. Bot. 25:1-78). The interpretation of the inflorescence as consisting of capitulae (condensed simple umbels) or heads instead of "irregularly compound um- bels"-the more usual view-is taken from the discriminating essay on, "The Um- belliferae of North Carolina and their distribution in the southeast" (Jour. Elisha Mitchell Sci. Soc. 66:195-266. 1950) by Charles L. Rodgers. The earlier treat- ment of the family by Mathias and Constance in NORTH AMERICAN FLORA separated the genera Sanicula and Eryngium widely. We now firmly believe this to have been a mistake. In returning the genera to closer juxtaposition, it is helpful to interpret their characteristics in comparable terms.
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