70 CLASS PENTANDRIA. 



weed has rough heart-shaped leaves; 2 or 3 flow- 

 ers on a peduncle, commonly of a fine purple, though 

 sometimes red, bluish, and white, with five pur- 

 ple lines. The tricolor Bindweed, (C. tricolor) 

 grows low and prostrate, but does not twine, having 

 smooth, oblong lance-shaped leaves ; singly disposed, 

 or solitary flowers in the bosom or axil of the leaves; 

 the corolla is of a beautiful bright blue, with a white 

 eye, or centre edged with yellow. 



Nearly allied to the preceding group is the natural 

 order of the Polemonia, from Polemonium, its type, 

 of which the moist shady woods of the United States 

 affords a single species. The principal character of 

 this group is the ternate division of* the stigma and 

 capsule. In the Polemonium or Jacob's-Ladder, as 

 it is called in Europe, from its pinnately cleft leaves, 

 the calyx is campanulate, with a 5-cleft border ; the 

 corolla also campanulate, with a 4 or 5-lobed erect 

 border, and having its short tube closed up by 

 five staminiferous valves. The stigma, as in the 

 whole order, trifid ; the capsule roundish, of 3 cells, 

 each cell many-seeded ; the seeds oblong, and some- 

 what triangular. Besides the P. reptans, which is a 

 native of the middle and western states, we sometimes 

 find in gardens, the P. cceruleum of Europe, like our 

 own, bearing blue flowers, and now and then occurring, 

 like most other plants, with those that are white. 



But the most common plant, in all our woods and 

 meadows, of this natural order, is the Phlox, of which 

 we have many species, and all of them not unaptly 

 resembling Pinks, except in their having a monopeta- 

 lous corolla. These have a small deeply 5-cleft 

 calyx ; a very conspicuous bluish or purplish, flat, 

 salver-shaped corolla, with 5 inversely wedge-shap- 

 ed lobes, and a conspicuous tube more or less curved, 

 which irregularity also operates on the disposition of 



