IPOMCEA LACUNOSA. 



WHITE STAR IPOMCEA. 



NATURAL ORDKR, CONVOI.VULACE.*:. 



IPOMCEA LACUNOSA, Linnaeus. — Minutely pubescent; stem twining; leaves cordate, acumi- 

 nate, angular-lobed or entire, on long petioles ; peduncle one to three-flowered, half as 

 long as the petioles ; sepals bristly ciliate, oblong-lanceolate, acute, half as long as the 

 corolla ; capsule pilous. Leaves two inches by one and one half inches, deeply cordate, 

 often deeply three-lobed, petioles one to three inches long. Flowers about one inch long, 

 white -with a purplish rira. (Wood's Chiss-Book of Botany. See also Chapman's Flora 

 ojf thi Soutlurn United States, and Gray's Manual of the Botany of the Northern United 

 States.) 



INN.(EUS, in his " Genera Plantarum," says of the plants 

 Q which belong to the genus //>omcea, that they are a kind 

 of Convolvulus or Bindweed, and it was the resemblance to the 

 latter genus which suggested the name to him. In Dr. Gray's 

 " Manual " we read : " Name, according to Linnceus, from ?/>s, 

 ipos, a Bindweed (which it is not), and /lomoios, like." The re- 

 semblance is, indeed, quite striking, but a close examination will 

 readily show that the genus Ipomccci is distinct from the genus 

 Convolvubis, although the two are closely related, and both of 

 them are members of the same natural order. By some of the 

 earlier writers our si^ecies was actually regarded as a Convolvu- 

 lus. Dillenius, for instance, who wrote in 1732, mentions it 

 under that name, and Alton refers to it as Convolvulus stcllattis, 

 or " Star- Flower," while according to Gray and Chapman, C. mi- 

 cranthus, or the Small-flowered Bindweed of Riddell, is a name 

 which belongs also to our plant. These synonyms appear to 

 be the only ones of any consequence that may be applied to the 

 species, and this is rather remarkable when we remember how 



