. The natural history of plants. Botany. VALEBIANAOEM. 50 perennial or shrubby plants of very various habit, erect or nearly stemless, stubby, with entire rosetted leaves, sometimes resembling those of the Andean Saxifrages, &c. The stems, moreover, are sarmentose, climbing, with dentate or dissected leaves. This is .the case especially in those named Astrephia, in which also the two sterile ovarian cells are often tolerably large and finally open widely outwards. Pleciritis, annuals from the same regions, has also triandrous flowers and a small collar or calycinal cupule at the top of the
. The natural history of plants. Botany. VALEBIANAOEM. 50 perennial or shrubby plants of very various habit, erect or nearly stemless, stubby, with entire rosetted leaves, sometimes resembling those of the Andean Saxifrages, &c. The stems, moreover, are sarmentose, climbing, with dentate or dissected leaves. This is .the case especially in those named Astrephia, in which also the two sterile ovarian cells are often tolerably large and finally open widely outwards. Pleciritis, annuals from the same regions, has also triandrous flowers and a small collar or calycinal cupule at the top of the ovary; but the corolla tube is prolonged anteriorly at the base to a rather long narrow spur. The sterile cells of the fruit are nerviform or project in involute wings. The leaves are entire or dentate-sinuate, and the contracted cymes are in a spikelike mass on a common axis. In Fedia (fig. 402, 403) the corolla limb is more irregular than in the preceding genera. It is nearly bilabiate, and the tube -fe*'* cornucopia: bears anteriorly near the base an elhptic glandular plate, little prominent. The calyx is very irregular, short and with four or five very unequal lobes. There are only two stamens and these correspond to the two posterior of Patri- nia and Valenanella. The ovary has three cells, of which one only-is fertile, and is surmounted by a style the stigmatiferous extremity of which is divided into three very small branches. The only species known, F. Cornucopice, is an annual of the Mediterranean region; it has the habit of Valenanella and flowers in uniparous cymes the axes of which become thick and hard at the period of fructification. The Valerians (fig. 396, 404-408) differ from the preceding genera chiefly by a sort of plume around the margin of the receptacle and, consequently, of the fruit, generally described as a calyx the elements of which are subdivided ip strips. It is very short funnel-shaped and in one piece soon divided into a variable number of subulat
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, booksubjectbotany, bookyear1871
