RHIZANTHEE (IIIIIZOGENS of Lindley) are a very remarkable natural order of plants. They are. parasitical plants, brown, yellow, or purple, never of a green color, destitute of true leaves, and having cellular scales instead. The stem is amorphous and fungus-like: sometimes, as in raffiesia (q.v.). there is no stem; but the flowers arise immediately from the surface of the branch or stein to which the plant is parasitically attached. Spiral vessels are either few or wanting, and the substance is chiefly cellular tissue. While their general structure thus associates them with fungi, which they resemble also in their mode of decay, they have the flowers and sexual organs of phanerogamous plants. The flowers are moncecious, direcioos, or hermaphrodite. Lindley regards these plants as forming a class distinct front the other phanerogamons plants (exogens and enclogens), and as one of the connecting links between them and the cryptogamous plants (Mallogens and acrogens). There are not many more than 50 known species in all, of which one or two are found in the s. of Europe, the others in Africa and the warmer parts of Asia and
America. Cynomorium coceineum (balunophoracece) is found in Malta, and is the fungus melitensIs of apothecaries. long celebrated for arresting hemorrhages. Others are like wise used as styptics. 04etiffus hypocistis. (cytinacete) grows on the roots of species of cistus in the s. of Europe. Its extract (swats hypoeistidis) is used as an astringent in hemorrhages and dysentery. A species of canbrophytum (baianQphoxacen) springs up suddenly after rain in Peru, like a fungus, is insipid, and is cooked and eaten under the name of mays del monk. Different species of baltsinophora are very abundant in northern India. They, are found in the Himalaya at tic elevation of 10,000 ft. producing great knots on the roots of maple trees, oaks, etc., which are sought after by the Thibetans, and Carried into Thibet, where they are made into very beautiful cups.