Page:EB1911 - Volume 16.djvu/706

Rh Development of larva and seed go on together, a few of the seeds serving as food for the insect, which when mature eats through the pericarp and drops to the ground, remaining dormant in its cocoon until the next season of flowering when it emerges as a moth. . 5.—Yucca gloriosa. Plant much reduced. 1, Floral diagram. 2, Flower.

. 6.—Twig of Butcher’s Broom, Ruscus aculeatus, slightly enlarged. 1, Male flower, 2, female flower, both enlarged; 3, berry, slightly reduced.

Asparagoideae.—Plants growing from a rhizome; fruit a berry. Asparagus contains about 100 species in the dryer warmer parts of the Old World; it has a short creeping rhizome, from which springs a slender, herbaceous or woody, often very much branched, erect or climbing stem, the ultimate branches of which are flattened or needle-like leaf-like structures (cladodes), the true leaves being reduced to scales or, in the climbers, forming short, hard more or less recurved spines. Ruscus aculeatus (fig. 6) is butcher’s broom, an evergreen shrub with flattened leaf-like cladodes, native in the southerly portion of England and Wales; the small flowers are unisexual and borne on the face of the cladode; the male contains three stamens, the filaments of which are united to form a short stout column on which are seated the diverging cells of the anthers; in the female the ovary is enveloped by a fleshy staminal tube on which are borne three barren anthers. Polygonatum and Maianthemum are allied genera with a herbaceous leafy stem and, in the former axillary flowers, in the latter flowers in a terminal raceme; both occur rarely in woods in Britain; P. multiflorum is the well-known Solomon’s seal of gardens (fig. 7), so called from the seal-like scars on the rhizome of stems of previous seasons, the hanging flowers of which contain no honey, but are visited by bees for the pollen. Convallaria is lily of the valley; Aspidistra, native of the Himalayas, China and Japan, is a well-known pot plant; its flowers depart from the normal arrangement of the order in having the parts in fours (tetramerous). Paris, including the British Herb Paris (P.

quadrifolia), has solitary tetra- to poly-merous flowers terminating the short annual shoot which bears a whorl of four or more leaves below the flower; in this and in some species of the nearly allied genus Trillium (chiefly temperate North America) the flowers have a fetid smell, which together with the dark purple of the ovary and stigmas and frequently also of the stamens and petals, attracts carrion-loving flies, which alight on the stigma and then climb the anthers and become dusted with pollen; the pollen is then carried to the stigmas of another flower.

Luzuriagoideae are shrubs or undershrubs with erect or climbing branches and fruit a berry. Lapageria, a native of Chile, is a favourite greenhouse climber with fine bell-shaped flowers.

Smilacoideae are climbing shrubs with broad net-veined leaves and small dioecious flowers in umbels springing from the leaf-axils; the fruit is a berry. They climb by means of tendrils, which are stipular structures arising from the leaf-sheath. Smilax is a characteristic tropical genus containing about 200 species; the dried roots of some species are the drug sarsaparilla.

The two tribes Ophiopogonoideae and Aletroideae are often included in a distinct order, Haemodoraceae. The plants have a short rhizome and narrow or lanceolate basal leaves; and they are characterized by the ovary being often half-inferior. They contain a few genera chiefly old world tropical and subtropical. The leaves of species of Sansevieria yield a valuable fibre.

Liliaceae may be regarded as the typical order of the series Liliiflorae. It resembles Juncaceae in the general plan of the flower, which, however, has become much more elaborate and varied in the form and colour of its perianth in association with transmission of pollen by insect agency; a link between the two orders is found in the group of Australian genera referred to above under Asphodeloideae. The tribe Ophiopogonoideae, with its tendency to an inferior ovary, suggests an affinity with the Amaryllidaceae which resemble Liliaceae in habit and in the horizontal plan of the flower, but have an inferior ovary. The tribe Smilacoideae, shrubby climbers with net-veined leaves and small unisexual flowers, bears much the same relationship to the order as a whole as does the order Dioscoreaceae, which have a similar habit, but flowers with an inferior ovary, to the Amaryllidaceae.

LILIENCRON, DETLEV VON (1844–1909), German poet and novelist, was born at Kiel on the 3rd of June 1844. He entered the army and took part in the campaigns of 1866 and 1870–71, in both of which he was wounded. He retired with the rank of captain and spent some time in America, afterwards settling at Kellinghusen in Holstein, where he remained till 1887. After some time at Munich, he settled in Altona and then at Altrahistedt, near Hamburg. He died in July 1909. He first attracted attention by the volume of poems, Adjutantenritte und andere Gedichte (1883), which was followed by several unsuccessful dramas, a volume of short stories, Eine Sommerschlacht (1886), and a novel Breide Hummelsbüttel (1887). Other collections of short stories appeared under the titles Unter flatternden Fahnen (1888). Der Mäcen (1889), Krieg und Frieden (1891); of lyric