Page:Illustrations of Indian Botany, Vol. 1.djvu/137

 teeth as there are valves or stigmas; placentas in the axis. Seeds indefinite, albumen mealy, with the embryo curved round it.

This character includes Silenaceae and Alsinaceae, but excludes Mollugo, which has a 3-5 celled capsule, with distinctly loculicidal dehiscence, which, for these reasons, I think more justly referable to Paronychiaceae.

These are very various. The curved embryo rolled round a mass of farinacious albumen, intimately connects them with a whole series of orders, all presenting the same peculiarities, hut separated in the present artificial disposition of the natural orders, by the structure of the flowers, some having hypogynous, some perigynous stamens, and several being apetalous.

After excluding Mollugo this maybe considered a strictly extra tropical order, not more than three or four genera, having tropical representatives, and these for the most part confined to the highest hills, or if met with on the plains, only during the cool season. In the temperate zones they are very abundant, and remarkable for presenting in the Pinks and Sweet Williams some of the most beautiful ornaments of the flower garden, and in the Chick weeds its most insignificant weeds.

Generally the Caryophillaceae may be characterized as uniformly insipid. The petals of the clove jelly flower are employed in medicine, but more on account of their fragrance and the fine colour they impart to infusions, syrups, &c. than for any valuable medicinal properties they possess.

1st.—1. Cerastium Indicum. Natural size. 2. A flower, sepals and petals drawn back to show the stamens, ovary, and styles. Petals cleft at the apex. 3. Stamens back and front view. 4. Styles and stigmas. 5. Capsule cut vertically, showing the contained seeds, and lobed dehiscence of the apex. 6, A seed. A 11 more or less magnified. 2d.—1. Silene intrusa. Natural size. 2. A flower opened showing the tubular calyx, and unguiculate lobed petals, 10 stamens, and stipitate ovary. 3. Anther back and front views. 4. Ovary cut vertically.

 

A large and important natural order of plants, consisting of trees, shrubs, and herbaceous annuals, with round, spreading branches, alternate, simple, entire, or lobed leaves; generally crenated or toothed; furnished with stipules, and usually clothed with stellate hairs. The flowers are hermaphrodite, or occasionally unisexual, generally regular, solitary or aggregated, in axillary, solitary, or fascicled, peduncles.

The calyx is persistent, composed of 5 sepals, sometimes free, sometimes more or less cohering, valvate (the edges not overlapping) in oestivation, and occasionally as in Abelmoschus, splitting only along one side (spathacious) often furnished with an involucrum of approximated bractete, resembling an exterior calyx, and so called by Linnaeus. The torus is dilated disk-like. The corolla is 5-petaled, inserted into the edge of the torus, alternate with the sepals, equal, unguiculate, cohering at the base among themselves and with the staminal tube, and spirally twisted in oestivation. Stamens usually indefinite, inserted between the petals and ovary; filaments more or less completely united into a tube, sometimes the union, as in Sida, is confined to the base, while at others, as Gossypium, &c. it extends nearly to the apex, and being of unequal lengths, they present the appearance of a column covered throughout with anthers, with the stigmas projecting and forming the apex of the pillar. The anthers are 1-celled! reniform, opening by a transverse clift, giving passage to the globose hispid! grains of pollen. The ovary is composed of several carpels, either definite (about 5) or indefinite, from 20 to 30 ranged round a central axis, with one or many ovules. Fruit capsular, many 