POLYANDRIA— POLYGYNIA. Anemone. 3b 



Perennial. July. 



A stoloniferous, smooth, floating herb^ with numerous radical 

 leaves, and a solitary centra] Jiower-stalk, no stem. The parent 

 plant sinks to the bottom after flowering, and sends out long 

 simple runners, each terminating in a leaf-bud, or young plant, 

 which first takes root in the mud, by several long fibres, and in 

 the following summer rises to the surface of the vvatcr, blossoms, 

 and then again subsides to ripen its seeds, and throw out fresh 

 runners, each tuft of leaves flowering but once. The leaves are 

 a span long or more, acute, highly vascular, fringed with very 

 sharp saw-like teeth. Flowers white, large and handsome, the 

 stalk firm, stout, two-edged, much shorter than the leaves. The 

 anthers are occasionally imperfect in one flower, the stigtnas in 

 another, whence some curious but superficial observers have 

 thought thejlowers dioecious ; but such casual imperfection in 

 those parts is frequent in plants that increase much by root. 

 The Stratiotes fills our ditches in summer, with a close phalanx 

 of sword-like leaves, whence its name, from rpocro;, an army, 

 in Dioscorides, whose description cannot be mistaken, though 

 Dr. Sibthorp did not notice this plant in Greece, any more than 

 the Sagittariu, which some commentators have mistaken for it. 

 See Matth. Valgr.v, 2. 482, 483. 



POLYANDRIA POLYGYNIA. 

 275. ANEMONE. Anemone. 



Linn. Gen. 279. Juss. 232. Fl.Br. 5S0. Tourn. t.l47. Lam. t.496. 

 Gcertn. t. 74. DeCand. Syst. vA.\ 88. 



Pulsatilla. Tourn. t. 148. Seeds with feathery tails. 



Anemonoides. Dill. Gen. \07.t. 4. Seeds simply pointed. Pe- 

 tals 6. 



Anemone-ranunculus. Ibid. t. 4. Seeds simply pointed. Petals 5. 



Nat. Ord. MultisiliqucE. Linn. 26. RammculacecE. Juss. 61. 

 See n. 270—273. 



Cal. none. Pet. from 5 to 15, inferior, regular, in one or 

 more rows, imbricated in the bud, elliptical or oblong, 

 deciduous. Filavi. numerous, capillary, much shorter 

 than the corolla. AntJi. terminal, of 2 round lobes, burst- 

 ing laterally. Germ, sujierior, numerous, collected into 



D 2 



