LYSIMACHIA QUADRIFOLIA. 

 FOUR-LEAVED LOOSESTRIFE. 



NATURAL ORDER, PRIMULACE,!;;. 



I.YSIMACHIA QUADKIFOLIA, Linnjeus. — Stem a foot or two high, simple, leafy throughout, some- 

 what pubescent ; leaves in whorls of four, sometimes of three, five, or six, rarely only in 

 pairs or partly scattered, oblong-lanceolate or the lower ovate, more or less acuminate 

 (one to three inches long), equal, and with flowers on filiform pedicels from most of the 

 upper axils, or sometimes the upper reduced to foliaceous bracts and the flowers loosely 

 racemose ; divisions of the corolla ovate-oblong (two lines long) ; ovules ten to eighteen. 

 (Gray's Synoptical Flora of North America See also Gray's M,iiiiial of the Bolaiiv of the 

 Northern United States, Chapman's Flora of the Southern United States, and Wood's Class- 

 Book of Botany.) 



N the work from which we have quoted, nine species 

 belonging to the two genera Lysimachia and Sieironema 

 (both of which were formerly classed together as Lysimachia) 

 are enumerated as natives of the United States. Amone these 

 there may be some species with larger flowers, or with flowers 

 forming a more showy mass than the plant which we are about 

 to describe, but none will probably be considered more strikingly 

 effective in general appearance. This effectiveness, however, is 

 due not only to the peculiar structure of the plant itself, but is 

 also largely aided by the circumstances under which it is fre- 

 quently found growing. 



The Lysimachia quadrifolia has creeping roots; that is to say, 

 it increases by short underground stems, which root at the 

 joints, or places where leaves would appear, if the growth were 

 above ground. Each plant produces a great number of these 

 rooting stems, and these, being ver}^ strong, often manage to 

 crowd out nearly all the other plants which grow near them, and 

 to appropriate the ground almost wholly to themselves. Seen in 



