ly matured,--long and slender, furrowed and rough on the sides,
tapering to a long, smooth point at the top, often somewhat bent or
curved, and measure about five-eighths of an inch in length. They will
keep four years.

An ounce contains three thousand two hundred seeds, and will sow a row
eighty feet in length. Some cultivators put this amount of seed into a
drill of sixty feet; but if the seed is of average quality, and the
season ordinarily favorable, one ounce of seed will produce an abundance
of plants for eighty or a hundred feet.

_Use._--The roots are prepared in various forms; but, when simply boiled
in the manner of beets and carrots, the flavor is sweet and delicate.
The young flower-stalks, if cut in the spring of the second year and
dressed like asparagus, resemble it in taste, and make an excellent
dish.

The roots are sometimes thinly sliced, and, with the addition of
vinegar, salt, and pepper, served as a salad. They are also recommended
as being remedial or alleviating in cases of consumptive tendency.

There is but one species or variety now cultivated.

* * * * *

SCOLYMUS.

Spanish Scolymus. Spanish Oyster-plant. Scolymus Hispanicus.

In its natural state, this is a perennial plant; but, when cultivated,
it is generally treated as an annual or as a biennial. The roots are
nearly white, fleshy, long, and tapering in their general form, and, if
well grown, measure twelve or fifteen inches in length, and an inch in
diameter at the crown. When cut or bruised, or where the fibrous roots
are broken or rubbed off, there exudes a thick, somewhat viscous fluid,
nearly flavorless, and of a milk-white color. The leaf is large, often
measuring a foot or more in length, and three inches in diameter,
somewhat variegated with green and white, deeply lobed; the lobes or
divisions toothed, and the teeth terminating in sharp spines, in the
manner of the leaves of many species of thistles. When in flower, the
plant is about three feet in height. The flowers, which are put forth
singly, are of an orange-yellow, and measure an inch and a half in
diameter. The seeds are flat, and very thin, membranous on the borders,
of a yellowish color, and retain their vitality three years. An ounce
contains nearly four thousand seeds.

_Soil and Cultivation._--Any good garden loam is adapted to the growth
of the Scolymus. It should be well and deeply stirred as for other
deep-growing root c