in botany: A genus of the digynia order belonging to the pentandra clas of plants; and in the natural method ranking under the 45th order, Umbellatae. The fruit is subovate, angled, and cork or spongy rinded.

There are five species, viz., the trifida, with bipinnated leaves; the ficula, with double winged leaves; the libanotis, with smooth furrowed seeds; the linacina, with plain channelled fruit; and the hungarica, with a plain, fungous, channelled seed. All these are perennial. Cactus centennial plants, rising pretty high, and bearing large umbels of yellow flowers, and may be propagated by seeds which ought to be sown soon after they are ripe; for if they are kept out of the ground till the next spring, they often miscarry. They must also be sown in a shady border where they are to remain: for the plants, having long tap-roots, will not bear transplanting so well as many others. The Hungarians in the neighborhood of Erlau, and those who border on Transylvania, Servia, &c. eat the root of the fifth species in a scarcity of corn for want of other bread.