Page:Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet vol 2 (1876).djvu/102

82 to the Mongols as the Shara-moto, and to the Tangutans as Djumtsa. As it has not yet been studied by European naturalists in its native country, I will describe it at some length.

It has three or four large dark green leaves near the root, from the centre of which springs the flower-stalk to a height of seven to ten feet, with a thickness of one-and-a-half inch near the ground. Old plants have ten or more leaves, but the flower-stalks are in such case more numerous, the proportion of leaves being invariably three or four to each. The section of leaf-stalk is oval, about the thickness of a finger; the length of the leaf being twenty-six inches, colour underneath green, above reddish, covered with fine reddish hairs one-fifth of an inch long. The flower-stalk throws out a few small leaves at its joints, and the small white flowers are set on a second stalk branching from the main stem two-thirds of its height from the ground.

The root is cylindrical with a number of slender offsets, the length and number of which depend on the age of the plant. When full grown the root is