8 POLYANDRIA— MONOGYNIA. Papavei, 



Between S\Vaff ham and Burwell, Cambridgeshire. Rmj. In other 

 parts of that county. Rev. Mi. Hemsted. About 4 miles from 

 Aylsham towards Cromer^ Norfolk. Mr. Hugh Rose. 



Annual. May, June. 



Root slender. Stem erect, branched, leafy, a foot high, round, 

 even, and generally quite smooth ; rarely somewhat hairy. 



. Leaves dark green, nearly smooth, twice or thrice pinnatifid, with 

 linear, opposite or alternate, bluntish, bristle-pointed segments; 

 the lower ones stalked ; upper sessile. Fl. on long, lateral, ax- 

 illary, or terminal simple stalks, of a brilliant violet blue, very 

 splendid, but extremely fugacious, somewhat larger than the 

 last. Pod 2 or 3 inches long, cylindrical, more or less clothed 

 with scattered, ascending, bristly prickles, separating when ripe 

 into 3 flattish valves, sometimes 4, as in Morison's figure, with 

 as many intermediate linear receptacles of the seeds, each united 

 internally with a membranous, undulated or corrugated, pitted 

 partition. These partitions meet in the centre, dividing the 

 pod into complete cells, though there is no central column. 

 Seeds like the other species, but smaller, attached by small stalks 

 to the receptacles, and nestling, in a double row, in the hollows 

 of the partitions. 



Medicus, a writer best known as the " iniquissimus censor'' of Lin- 

 naeus and his disciples, has in Usteri's Annalen der Botanick, v. 

 3. 9 — 19, (in the 2 1st page of which he is stigmatized with the 

 above designation,) divided the Linnsean Chclidonium, establish- 

 ing Glancium of Tournefort, and proposing another genus, 

 founded on 6'. violaceum, by the name of Ra;meria, after a late 

 German botanist. This genus is admitted by the able Prof. De- 

 Candolle, whence it becomes an object of attention ; for Medi- 

 cus and his writings have in general not been found worthy of 

 much regard. My learned friend chiefly depends on the fol- 

 lowing characters to distinguish Rcemeria, ^' a capsule of 3 or 4 

 valves, and a single cell, the receptacles, though cellular, or 

 pitted, not being combined together." But he describes one 

 species with only two valves, which abrogates the former cha- 

 racter; and the cellular extension of the receptacles, though not 

 spongy, is otherwise exactly analogous to the partitions of the 

 bivalve species, constituting, in fact, real and complete parti- 

 tions, meeting, though not combined, in the centre of the fruit; 

 and they identify the partitions of the bivalve species, which Jus- 

 sieu was led, by the analogy of this natural order, to doubt. 

 Linnaeus has remarked that there are few genera in which some 

 part or other of the fructification does not occasionally form an 

 exception to the generic character ; and this is no less true of 

 natural orders. 



265. PAPAVER. Poppy. 



Linn, Gen. 263. Juss. 236. FL Br. 565. Tourn. t. 1 19, 120. 

 Lam. tAh\, Goer In, ^ CO. 



