The treasury of botany: a popular dictionary of the vegetable kingdom; with which is incorporated a glossary of botanical terms . gum tragacanth, which is whole-some and nutritious, and is said to be usedas an article of food by the aborigines incases of extreme need. Dr. Lindley, indescribing the tree, says, the wood has aremarkably loose texture; it is soft andbrittle, owing to the presence of an enor-mous quantity of very large tubes of pittedtissue, some of which measure a line anda half across; they form the whole inner dela] Ki)t tEratfurg of SSotattg. 390 face of each woody zone. When b
The treasury of botany: a popular dictionary of the vegetable kingdom; with which is incorporated a glossary of botanical terms . gum tragacanth, which is whole-some and nutritious, and is said to be usedas an article of food by the aborigines incases of extreme need. Dr. Lindley, indescribing the tree, says, the wood has aremarkably loose texture; it is soft andbrittle, owing to the presence of an enor-mous quantity of very large tubes of pittedtissue, some of which measure a line anda half across; they form the whole inner dela] Ki)t tEratfurg of SSotattg. 390 face of each woody zone. When boilingwater is poured on shavings of this wood,a clear jelly resembling tragacanth isformed, and becomes a thick viscid mass ;iodine stains it brown, but no trace ofstarch is indicated in it. Usually theleaves are from two to four inches long,entire, stalked, and lance-shaped; some-times, however, they are digitate and com-posed of seven to nine sessile leaflets ofthe same form as the simple leaves. Thedigitate leaves are probably found only onyoung plants. The flowers are inconspicu-ous, and borne on short panicles arising. Delabechea rupestris. from the axils of, and shorter than, theleaves; in the males the calyx is five-cleft,and the stamens numerous; the femalesare not known. The fruit is composed offive stalked smooth brown leathery folli-cles, covered internally with a thick fur ofstarry hairs; each of these contains aboutsix seeds, which have their lower portioncovered with similar hairs, and are smoothabove. The genus is named in honour ofthe late eminent geologist, Sir H. T. De laBeche. [A. A. B.] DEL AIREA. The name sometimes givento a trailing South African Groundsel(Senecio mikanioides), with stalked, smooth,and fleshy leaves, which are cordate at thebase, and five to seven-lobed. The flower-heads are numerous, and disposed in axil-lary corymbs longer than the leaves. In gar-dens it is called German Ivy. [A. A. B.] DELASTREA. A genus of Sapotacece,represented by a
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1860, bookpublisher, booksubjectbotany
