CLASS HEXANDR1A. 



93 



of the spike. It evidently belongs to the same natural 

 family as the Pepper-plant (Piper). The roots pos- 

 sess, "indeed, a racey aroma and taste, and the whole 

 aspect of the plant is that of some species of Pep- 

 per. They grow in considerable clusters, as the root 

 runs, and sends up at short intervals, sparingly forked 

 stems about 18 inches or 2 feet high, clothed not very 

 thickly, with alternate, petiolate, heart-shaped, point- 

 ed, entire leaves. The narrow and crowded spikes 

 of white flowers terminate the branches, and are from 

 3 to 6 inches long, gracefully nodding towards the 

 extremity, and hence the specific name of cernuus ap- 

 plied unnecessarily, to this only species of its genus, 

 by Linnaeus. The rachis, as well as flowers, are 

 equally yellowish white, and the flowers from then- 

 crowded position, irregularity in their number of parts, 

 and imperfection or abridgment of structure, are not 

 very well calculated for the study of an entire novice 

 in botany. All of flower that will be found, is a single 

 scale subtending its cluster of stamens, of which the 

 anthers and filaments are adnate, or form but one 

 continuous body. The capsules, commonly 4 in num- 

 ber, are small, and each contains 1, or rarely 2 seeds. 

 Alisma, or Water Plantain, holds, at the end of the 

 6th class, precisely the same relative situation as Xan- 

 thorhiza did in the 5th, namely, the order Polygy- 

 nia, and though now made the type of a natural or- 

 der apart, Alismace^, it scarcely differs from the 

 Ranunculaceje, to which that genus of the 5th class 

 is referred. The Alismas are aquatic plants, with 

 nerved, ovate, or partly heart-shaped leaves, bearing 

 perfect small flowers, in a very compound ternately 

 verticillated panicle. In the perfect character of their 

 flowers, and the small and definite number of their 

 stamens, they differ from the Sagitaria or Arrow-leaf. 

 As in that genus, Alisma has a calyx of 3 leaves, 3 



