Spec. Plant Willd. iii. 1809.

Cl. 19. Ord. 2. Syngenesia Superflua. Nat. ord. Compositae.

* Discoid.

G. 1472. Receptacle naked. Pappus sub-marginate. Calyx imbricate hemispherical. Calyx rays obsolete1, trifid.

Species 18. T. vulgare."1 Common Tansy. Med. Pot. 3d edit. 67. t. 27. Smith, Flora Brit. 862. Eng. Bot. 1229.

Officinal. Tanaceti vulgaris flores folia, Edin. Tanacetum vulgare; folia, Bub. The leaves of Common Tansy.

Lyn. Tanassie(F.), Rheinfarn(G), Wormkruid (Dutch), Rhreinfan (Dan.), Renfana (Swed.,) Kiviat wrotyczowy (Pol.), Tanaceto (I.), Atanasia (S.), Tanasia (Port.), Dikaja riabina (Russ.).

This is an indigenous, perennial plant, growing on hills, and by the sides of roads and fields; flowering in July and August; but it is generally cultivated for medicinal and culinary purposes. The root is creeping, sending up stiff, erect stems, about two feet in height, leafy, obscurely hexagonal, and striated; with alternate leaves, doubly pinnatifid, acutely cleft, somewhat downy on the under side, eared at the base, and embracing the stem. The flowers are in terminal, dense corymbs, of a bright yellow colour, and flattish: the leaflets of the calyx are obtuse, with a dry scaly margin: the florets are numerous; those of the disc hermaphrodite and five-cleft, those of the margin female and trifid: the seeds are small, uniform, inversely pyramidal, pentagonal, ribbed, of an ash-colour, and crowned with a narrow marginate membraneous pappus.

Qualities. - Tansy has a strong, peculiar, fragrant odour, and an acrid, bitterish taste, somewhat resembling that of camphor. These qualities it yields both to water and alcohol; and in distillation with water affords a greenish-yellow essential oil, which has in perfection the odour of the plant, and probably contains camphor.

Medical properties and uses. - The leaves and flowers of tansy are tonic and anthelmintic. It was formerly regarded as a powerful remedy in intermittants, dropsy, hysteria, and obstructed menstruation; but experience, and the knowledge of better remedies, have set aside its use in these diseases. An infusion of the whole herb in boiling water has been highly extolled as a preventive of the return of gout3; but it is now scarcely ever used, except as an anthelmintic for expelling lumbrici, to which it has certainly some pretensions. The dose of the leaves in powder is from Э j. to 3j., twice a day.

1 Radius calidiore testate prodit. Willdenow, 1. c.

Dioscoridis. 3 Clarke, Essays Physical and Literary, iii. 438.