Osmorhiza chilensis, sweet cicely



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Intermountain Flora
Perennial from a well developed taproot that may be surmounted by a slightly branched caudex, not markedly odorous; stems solitary or sometimes 2 or 3, rather slender, 3-10 dm tall, usually branched above and producing several umbels; herbage more or less hirsute to occasionally essentially glabrous; leaves biternate, the leaflets thin, narrowly to very broadly ovate, coarsely toothed and sometimes incised or more or less tripartite, mostly 2-7 cm long and 1.5-5 cm wide, the basal ones several, long-petiolate, the cauline ones 1-3, with shorter petioles or subsessile, but the blade fairly well developed; umbels several, small, inconspicuous, and short-pedunculate at anthesis, becoming open and long-pedunculate at maturity, the peduncles 5-25 cm long, the 3-8 rays ascending-spreading, 2-12 cm long; involucre and involucel wanting or nearly so; flowers greenish-white; stylopodium more or less conic and commonly as high as or higher than wide, together with the style 0.3-1 mm long; fruit densely ascending-hispid toward the base, and generally sparsely so along the ribs above, linear-oblong, 12-22 mm long, including the caudate base, concavely narrowed toward the summit, the terminal (0.5) 1-2 mm more or less distinctly set off as a broadly beak-like apex; 2n = 22.

Cronquist, A., Holmgren, N.H., and Holmgren, P.K. (1997) "Intermountain Flora" pg. 350, vol. 3 part A, The New York Botanical Garden New York.