12 TRANS. ST. LOUIS ACAD. SCIENCE. 



* Estipulate; pedicels elongated ; flowers large, blue; sepals not glandular-margined, 



persistent; filaments with slender intervening appendages ; carpels j, not carti- 

 laginous at base ; styles distinct ; capsule with membranous septa, the half-carpels 

 somewhat longitudinally concave and 2-grooved on the back ; seeds compressed. 

 — § Eulinnm. 



L. usiTATissiMUM. L. Spec. 277. — Annual, glabrous and glaucous, a 

 foot and a half high; stem simple or mostly cespitose, longitudinally 

 striate; leaves not crowded, lanceolate, very acute, 3-nerved (2-5 X 15-3S 

 mm.); flowering branches corymbosely clustered above, loosely leafy; 

 sepals broadly oval, short-acuminate, the interior scarious-margined and 

 ciliate, 3-keeled, the lateral nerves shortly evanescent; petals obcuneate, 

 rounded and crenulate at apex, about 10 mm. long, twice the length of 

 the calyx; stamens one-half longer than the sepals, appendages minute; 

 pistil equal to the stamens; stigmas elongated, subclavate, about as long 

 as the styles; capsule broadly conic-ovoid, about 7 mm. long, and equal 

 to the calyx, subindehiscent, incompletely to-celled, the septa not ciliate; 

 seeds 4-6 mm. long. — Along railroads, &c., escaped from cultivation. 



L. HUMiLE, Mill. Diet. No. 2; Planch. I.e. vii. 166. L. iisitatissimum, 

 \^x. crepitans, Schub. & Mart. — Resembling the last, but the capsule 

 longer (8 min.), dehiscent, with ciliate septa. — Escaped in similar situa- 

 tions to the last. 



It is an open question whether these cultivated flaxes, which do not 

 properly belong to our flora, are to be regarded as constituting two dis- 

 tinct species, or only well-marked hereditary races of a single species. 

 Planchon, whose opinion on the genus is worthy of careful consideration, 

 held them to be distinct, and has been followed by Boissier and other 

 weigiity authority; while DeCandolle, with a bias in the other direction, 

 takes the other view, uniting with them the perennial L. angtistifolium, 

 which I have not seen from America. It is interesting to note that the 

 old Egyptians cultivated a7tgustifolium and humilc, while the Swiss Lake- 

 dwellers had the former species. L. humile is said to be even yet the only 

 form cultivated in Abyssinia, but nsitalisstmum is now grown in Egypt, 

 as elsewhere.* 



I. L. Lewisii, Pursh. Fl. Am, Sept. i. 210. L. perenne, var. Lewisii, 

 Eat. & Wr. ; Planch. L,. Sibiricuin, var. Leixiisti, Lindl. L. decurretis, 

 Kellogg. L. Lyallanum, Alefeld. L. peren7ie of the later treatises on 

 American botany. — Mostly perennial, glabrous and glaucous, a couple of 

 feet high; stems mostly cespitosely clustered, striate; leaves often some- 

 what crowded, oval-linear, acute or subobtuse ; 3-5-nerved (-5-5X5-35 

 mm); flowers rather corymbose; sepals broadly oval, mostly pointless, 



* See a posthumous paper by Alexander Braun in Zeitschr. f. Ethnologic, Berlin, ix. 

 289 (Just's Bot. Jahresbericht, V1.2 474); and DeCandolle: Origine des Plantes Cultivees, 

 95-103. At p. 96 of the latter work will be found a succinct tabulation of the distinctive 

 features of these forms, based upon the investigations of Heer. 



