RANUNCULACER. (CrowFooT FAmMILy.) 
Herbs (sometimes woody) with the few or numerous sepals, petals, 
stamens, and pistils all distinct and free: flowers regular or irregular : 
sepals often petal-like, and petals wanting in some genera: fruits con- 
sisting of achenes, pods, or berries: leaves varying from simple to much 
compounded, with petioles dilated at base. 
* Sepals 4, petal-like: petals none (or small): fruit consisting of long-tailed achenes: 
leaves all opposite. 
1. Clematis. Climbing by leafstalks or erect. 
**Sepals often petal-like: petals none: fruit consisting of numerous or several 
achenes in a head or spike: leaves compound, alternate or radical (upper some- 
times opposite or whorled). 
9 Thalictrum. Flowers panicled: leaves alternate: achenes few. 
3, Anemone. Peduncles 1-flowered: stem-leaves opposite or whorled, forming an 
involucre remote from the flower: achenes numerous. 
** * Petals evident: leaves simple or compound, alternate or radical: achenes 
numerous. 
4. Myosurus. Flowers solitary on a seape: sepals spurred at base: petals slender : 
achenes in a long slender spike. 
5. Ranunculus. Petals generally broad and with a scale or gland at base: achenes 
in a head. 
****Petals and sepals both conspicuous and colored, one or both prominently 
spurred: fruit consisting of a few pods: leaves alternate, compound. 
6. Aquilegia. Sepals 5: petals 5, large, spur-shaped. 
7. Delphinium. Sepals 5, the upper one spurred: petals 4, the upper pair with 
long spurs inclosed in the calyx spur. 
1. CLEMATIS L. (Virain’s BOWER.) 
Perennial herbs or vines, mostly a little woody, climbing by the leaf- 
stalks (rarely low and erect), with 4 colored valvate sepals, no petals, 
opposite leaves, and numerous achenes with the persistent styles forming 
naked, hairy, or plumose tails. 
* Flowers cymose-paniculate, rather small and diecious: sepals thin, white. 
1. C. Drummondii Torr. & Gray. Leaves pinnate and long-petioled, villous be- 
neath and somewhat hirsute above ; leaflets lanceolate to broadly ovate, 3-lobed, the 
lobes acute to long-acuminate : sepals narrowly oblong, villous outside: achenes 
pubescent,the plumose tails very slender and 5 to 10 em. long.—The Texan “ Virgin’s 
bower,” a characteristic and beautiful climber abundant in valleys throughout the 
State, and even occurring on the prairies in straggling forms. 
