138 ORDER SILICULOSA. 



embrace other plants quite dissimilar, which common- 

 ly make a nearer approach to the Cress or Lepidivm 

 by their rounded and carinated silicles, but differ also 

 from that genus by their multiplicity of seeds. 



One of our very earliest plants, the Draba verna, in 

 flower often in March, in the middle states, belongs to 

 this order. It is an annual, bearing small white flow- 

 ers, and the plant, of very diminutive size, bearing a 

 few lanceolate, short, hairy, somewhat serrated leaves, 

 and naked scapes, with a terminal corymb of flowers, 

 which, in character with the genus, are succeeded by 

 elliptic-oblong silicles, rather flatly compressed, and 

 the cells containing many minute seeds without mar- 

 gin. The cotyledones, here, indeed, a desperate mi- 

 croscopic character, are also brought in, as on many 

 other occasions in this class, to afford an additional 

 character, and they are said to be decumbent; that is, 

 with the back of one of the seed-lobes applied to the 

 curved radicle. The cotyledones are also said to be 

 incumbent, when their edges are applied to the radicle. 

 In this, and the next species, D. caroliniana, the 

 petals are very distinctly cleft. In the latter, the 

 silicle is so long as to appear linear- oblong, exceeding 

 in length its supporting pedicel. 



In Lepidium, or Cress, the silicle is roundish-ovate, 

 or partly obcordate, with the valves carinated and 

 bursting open ; and each cell contains but 1 seed. 

 The cotyledones are incumbent. 



In the Moonwort (Lunaria), sometimes called Hon- 

 esty, the silicle is roundish-oval, quite flat, pedicellate 

 or stipitate, and as large nearly as a cent. This is 

 not an uncommon garden plant, producing heart- 

 shaped, indented, acute leaves, the lower ones petio- 

 lated ; the flowers, nearly as large as those of the 

 Wall-flower, are of a fine purple ; and 2 of the leaves 

 of the calyx are swelled out or gibbous at the base. 



