66 CLASS PENTANDRIA. 



mask to ordinary observers the real affinities and true 

 relations which plants bear to each other. 



In the present artificial and enormous class, the 

 importance of classifying plants by their natural char- 

 acters, rather than by the unimportant coincidence in 

 their number of stamens, becomes quite obvious ; and 

 we shall, accordingly, select a few examples of natur- 

 al groups in the first order of Pentandria. At the 

 commencement of the class you will find the group 

 long known by the name of Asperifoli«, or Rough- 

 leaved plants, a character obvious enough in most of 

 the tribe ; but they will be more certainly known by 

 the character they have, in common with the Labiate 

 plants, of producing 4 naked seeds, or rather, bony, 

 single-seeded pericarps in the bottom of the calyx. 

 They have likewise a monopetalous corolla of five 

 equal divisions ; except in Echium, where there is an 

 evident ringeucy, approaching by a shade, to the La- 

 biate character. In some genera the corolla has its 

 orifice closed or hidden by five projections or inden- 

 tions which cover the stamens. The plants themselves 

 have rough and undivided leaves, set in alternate order 

 along the stem, the summit of which presents spikes 

 or racemes of flowers, before developement coiled 

 inward, but, in time, lengthening out, and becoming 

 straight and forked flower-branches. 



To this tribe, though the common American species 

 presents a remarkable exception in the perfect smooth- 

 ness of its leaves, belongs the Lungwort, or Pulmona- 

 ria. The Virginian species (Pulmonaria virginica), 

 occurs pretty commonly in the shady woods of Penn- 

 sylvania, and most other of the southern and western 

 states ; its flowers, which appear in May, look like so 

 many small, bright blue, pendulous funnels, internally 

 open at the orifice, after the manner of the genus, 

 each springing out of a prismatic, pentagonal, 5- 



