CALLIRRHOE INVOLUCRATA. PURPLE POPPY-MALLOW. 7 



to live in hot, dry places peculiarly fit it. Its beautiful flowers 

 must show to great advantage when it is grown as suggested by 

 Mr. Robinson. In American gardens it is chiefly used as a 

 border-plant, in which capacity it receives great praise from Mr. 

 Vick, of Rochester, N. Y., and Messrs. D. M. Ferry & Co., of 

 Detroit, Mich., in whose grounds, as well as in those of the 

 writer, it does well with little care. Mr. Ferry likens the flower 

 to "a portulaca in form and color." Mr. Vick finds that the 

 seeds grow freely, sown in the open ground, and that the seed- 

 ling plants will bloom the first year, the plant being a perennial. 

 The specimen from which our drawing was made was grown at 

 the Bussey Institute, under the hands of Mr. Jackson Dawson, 

 head gardener of the Arnold Arboretum. Plants growing in 

 the writer's garden, kindly supplied by Mr. Sternberg, of Fort 

 Hays, in Kansas, have the root-leaves less deeply lobed. 



Malvaceous plants are generally beautiful, and some are quite 

 celebrated for the fibres which they afford for textile fabrics, but 

 only few of them are known for their qualities as edibles. The 

 immature seed-vessels of the okra are perhaps the best known 

 of malvaceous vegetables. It is not unlikely, however, that the 

 culinary list of these plants might be largely extended. Chil- 

 dren gather and eat the unripe fruit of Malva rotundifolia, and 

 although this is probably done more in play than because these 

 seed-vessels are really a peculiar relish, the fact still shows that 

 the plant is not unwholesome, and that possibly the larger- 

 fruited kinds might be turned to some use as vegetables. 



" Then sitting down when school was o'er 

 Upon the threshold of the door. 

 Picking from mallows, sport to please, 

 The crumbled seeds we called a cheese." 



Our present species also has a flat, circular fruit, resem- 

 bling a " cheese," but its roots probably possess a still more sub- 

 stantial value. This fact seems to have been first noted by 



