THE FAMILIES OF FLOWERING PLANTS. 



By diaries Louis Pollard. 



IV. THE LILIES AND THEIR ALLIES. 



VERY few plant-families exhibit so wide a diversity of habit among 

 their genera as the Lilies and related herbs. The group is a 

 large one, and as treated by the English and many German 

 systematists, it comprises nearly 190 genera, which together 

 form the aggregate known hitherto as the Liliaceae of Lily family. 

 The modern tendency among our botanists, however, is to recognize 

 three distinct families; the true lilies, {Liliacecs), the Bunch-flowers 

 (Melanthacecs), and the group to which belongs the Lily-of-the-Valley 

 {Convallariacece) . 



The Liliaceae proper contains considerably over a hundred genera 

 and about 1300 species. The plants are chiefly herbs, growing from 

 bulbs or corms, with leaves varying greatly in size and shape. The 

 flowers are distinguished by having a conspicuous colored perianth, 

 the divisions of which, six in number, are either quite free from each 

 other, as in the Lily and Tulip, or united below into a tube, as in the 

 Hyacinth. The ovary is almost invariably free, that is, not coherent 

 with any part of the floral envelope ; and it becomes in fruit a few- or 

 a many-seeded capsule. Of course there occur exceptions to these 

 general characters, as in other large families; thus the Star-grass 

 (Alelrts), has the perianth partly adnate to the ovary, while in some 

 species of Yucca the fruit is not capsular, but fleshy and berry-like. 

 Again, although the vast preponderance of genera consist of herbace- 

 ous plants, some of them are trees of quite imposing height. It should 

 be stated that in all three of these families the stamens are 6 in num- 

 ber; and there is rarely any material distinction in color between the 

 inner and outer divisions of the perianth (corresponding to calyx and 

 corolla in the higher plants). 



The Lily family is noteworthy as containing a large proportion 

 not only of our most beautiful wild flowers, but also of the various ex- 

 otics which we cultivate for early blooming. Thus the little squill 

 {Scilla) hangs out its blue bells with the first soft breaths of spring, 

 and is followed in quick succession by the showy Tulips and Hyacinths, 

 the Fritillarias and the stately Crown-imperial {Iniperialis). In the 

 woods at about the same season blossoms that exquisite flower which 

 has so long staggered under the unmeaning and inaccurate name of 

 " Dog's-tooth Violet," as if anything in the floral world could be more 

 remote in appearance as well as structure than the lily and the true 



