in botany; a genus of the trigynia order, belonging to the pentandria clas of plants. The corolla is quinquepetalous; the drupa is heart-shaped, cellulous, and monospermous. There is but one species.

SEmen, seed. See Botany, sect. iv. p. 435.

With respect to number, plants are either furnished with one seed, as pea-pink and biftort; two, as wood-roof and the umbelliferous plants; three, as spurge; four, as the lip-flowers of Tournefort and rough-leaved plants of Ray; or many, as ranunculus, anemone, and poppy.

The form of seeds is likewise extremely various, being either large or small, round, oval, heart-shaped, kidney-shaped, angular, prickly, rough, hairy, wrinkled, fleck or shining, black, white, or brown. Most seeds have only one cell or internal cavity; those of lesser burdock, valerian, lamb's lettuce, cornelian cherry, and fennel, have two.

With respect to substance, seeds are either soft, membranaceous, or of a hard bony substance; as in gromwell, tamarind, and all the nuciferous plants.

In point of magnitude, seeds are either very large, as in the cocoa-nut; or very small, as in campanula, ammania, rampions, and throat-wort.

With respect to situation, they are either imperfect promiscuously through the pulp (*femina nidulonia*), as in water-lily; affixed to a future or joining of the valves of the seed-vessel, as in the crofs-shaped and pea-bloom flowers; or placed upon a placenta or receptacle within the seed vessel, as in tobacco and thorn-apple.

Seeds are said to be naked (*femina nuda*) which are not contained in a cover or vessel; such are those of the lip and compound flowers, the umbelliferous and rough-leaved plants; covered seeds (*femina testa*) are con- contained in some vessel, whether of the capsule, pod, berry, apple, or cherry kind.

A simple feed is such as bears neither crown, wing, nor downy papus; the varieties in feeds, arising from these circumstances, are particularly enumerated under their respective heads.

In assimilating the animal and vegetable kingdoms, Linnaeus designates seeds the eggs of plants. The fecundity of plants is frequently marvellous; from a single plant or stalk of Indian Turkey wheat, are produced, in one summer, 2000 seeds; of eleocharis, 3000; of sunflower, 4000; of poppy, 32,000; of a spike of oat's tail, 10,000 and upwards; a single fruit, or seed-vessel, of tobacco, contains 1000 seeds; that of white poppy, 8000. Mr Ray relates, from experiments made by himself, that 1012 tobacco-seeds are equal in weight to one grain; and that the weight of the whole quantum of seeds in a single tobacco-plant, is such as must, according to the above proportion, determine their number to be 362,000. The same author estimates the annual produce of a single stalk of spleenwort to be upwards of one million of seeds.

The dissemination of plants reflects the different methods or vehicles by which nature has contrived to disperse their seeds for the purpose of increase. These by naturalists are generally reckoned four.

1. Rivers and running waters. 2. The wind. 3. Animals. 4. An elastic spring, peculiar to the seeds themselves.

1. The seeds which are carried along by rivers and torrents are frequently conveyed many hundreds of leagues from their native soil, and cast upon a very different climate, to which, however, by degrees they render themselves familiar.

2. Those which are carried by the wind, are either winged, as in fir-tree, trumpet-flower, tulip-tree, birch, arbor-vite, meadow rue, and Jeffersonia, and some umbelliferous plants; furnished with a papus, or downy crown, as in valerian, poplar, reed, succulent swallow-wort, cotton-tree, and many of the compound flowers; placed within a winged calyx or seed-vessel, as in fennel, sea-pink, dock, dioecious, ash, maple, and elm-trees, logwood and wood; or lastly, contained within a swelled calyx or seed-vessel, as in winter-cherry, cucubalus, melilot, bladder-nut, fumitory, bladder-fennel, heart-seed, and chick-pea.

3. Many birds swallow the seeds of vanelloce, juniper, milletoe, oats, millet, and other grasses, and void them entire. Squirrels, rats, parrots, and other animals, suffer many of the seeds which they devour to escape, and thus in effect disseminate them. Moles, ants, earthworms, and other insects, by ploughing up the earth, admit a free passage to those seeds which have been scattered upon its surface. Again, some seeds attach themselves to animals, by means of hooks, crotchetts, or hairs, which are either affixed to the seeds themselves, as in hound's tongue, mouse-ear, vervain, carrot, bastard-parsley, sanicle, water hemp-agrimony, arctopus and verbesina; to their calyx, as in burdock, agrimony, rhoea, small wild bugloss, dock, nettle, pellitory, and leadwort; or to their fruit or seed-vessel, as in liquorice, enchanter's night shade, crocus-wort, olivers, French honey-suckle, and arrow-headed grass.

4. The seeds which disperse themselves by an elastic force, have that force resident either in their calyx, as in oats and the greater number of ferns; in their papus, as in centaurea crupina; or in their capsule, as in geranium, herb-bennet, African spurge, fraxinella, horsetail, balsam, Malabar nut, cucumber, elaterium, and male balsam apple.

SEmen, in the animal economy. See Physiology, sect. xii. and Anatomy, no. 109.

SEmen Sanctum, or Santonicum. See Artemisia.