SUPPLEMENT. 



THE FAMILIES OF FLOWERING PLANTS. 



By Charles Louis Pollard. 



CHAPTER X.^'K.— Continued. 



FAMILY Scrophulariaceae. Figwort Family. These plants are herbs, 

 shrubs or occasionally trees, having perfect but usually somewhat 

 irregular flowers. The calyx is persistent, 4-5-divided, and some- 

 times irregularly cleft. The corolla is usually 2-lipped ; the stamens 

 are 2, 4 or 5, occasionally nearly equal, but more often in two sets of 

 different lengths (didynamous) and inserted on the corolla. Pistil entire 

 or 2-lobed ; ovary superior, 2-celled or rarely 1-celled, becoming in fruit 

 a capsule with numerous seeds. The family contains about 165 genera 

 and 2500 species of very wide distribution. 



Although very close in appearance and structure to some of the re- 

 lated families, the figworts can be distinguished, technically, by their 

 albuminous seeds. One tribe is indeed so close to the nightshades that 

 it can only be separated by a finely drawn arbitrary line. By some 

 writers the family has been divided into groups according to the arrange- 

 ment of the corolla-lobes in the bud. Thus the Salpiglossideae, containing 

 the showy garden plants of the genera Salpiglossis, BrowaUia and 

 ScJiizantJms, has the corolla plaited, with the two upper lobes outside. 

 Another large group contains the snapdragons and their allies, and is 

 distinguished by having a 2-lipped corolla bearing a fancied resemblance 

 to the human face in some of the genera, such as Antirrhinum, the garden 

 snapdragon, and Linaria, which includes the wild toadflax or " butter- 

 and-eggs. " The corolla of the latter bears in addition a long spur. 

 This tribe is a very large one, containing many highly ornamental herbs. 

 Such genera as Pentstemon and Mimulus, countless species of which 

 grow wild in our Western States, exhibit many horticultural varieties, 

 with flowers of showy coloration (See Fig. 204). The familiar mullein 

 ( Vei'hasciim), of which there are numerous European species, is perhaps 

 the only common weed of this group. 



The next group has the corolla imbricate in the bud and the upper 

 two lobes always inside, and it is scarcely at all bilabiate. Here we find 

 the genus Gei^ardia, whose attractive pink and white flowers are conspicu- 



