RUELLIA CILIOSA. 



LONG-TUBED RUELLIA, 



NATURAL ORDER, ACA\TIIACE/K. 



RuELLiA CILIOSA, Pursh. — Hirsute, with soft whitish hairs (one foot to three feet high); 

 leaves nearly sessile, oval or ovate-oblong (one inch to two inches long); flowers one to 

 three and almost sessile in the a.xils; tube of the corolla (one inch to one and one half 

 inches long) fully twice the length of the setaceous calyx-lobes ; the throat short. (Gray's 

 Miiiiual of till' Bo/iiny of t/ie A'orllu'rn UiiilcJ Stales. See also, under Difitcracantlms 

 fi/wsiis. Wood's Class-Bool; I'f Bi'laiiy, and Chapman's Flora of Ihc Southern United 

 States.) 



HE name of the natural order to which the Ruellia ciliosa 

 belongs is historically interesting, as it is derived from 

 the Acanl/ms, so well known in connection with the Corinthian 

 order of architecture. The legend of the invention of the 

 Corinthian capital varies somewhat as it is told by different 

 writers. The most pathetic version is given as follows by Fanny 

 Osgood : " It is said that the architect Callimach, passing near 

 the tomb of a young maiden who had died a few days before the 

 time appointed for her nuptials, moved by tenderness and pity, 

 approached to scatter some flowers upon her tomb. Another 

 tribute to her memory had preceded his. Her nurse had col- 

 lected the flowers which should have decked her on her wedding- 

 day, and putting them with the marriage veil in a little basket, 

 had placed it on the grave near a plant of Acanthus, and then 

 covered it with a tile. In the succeeding spring the leaves of 

 the Acanthus grew around the basket ; but being stayed in their 

 growth by the projecting tile they recoiled, and surmounted its 

 extremities. Callimach, surprised at this rural decoration, which 

 seemed the work of the Graces in tears, conceived the capital of 



