1865.] GIBB — ON SANGUINARIA CANADENSIS. 435 



andria Monogynia, and the natural order Papaveracece. (It was 

 placed by De Jussieu in his natural order Papavera, and by 

 Necker in the Catizopliita). 



General Characters. — The Calyx (flower cup) is ovate 

 and concave, has two sepals shorter than the blossoms, and falls off 

 very early. The corolla (blossom) consists of eight petals, but 

 varying from seven to fourteen, which are spreading, oblong, obtuse,, 

 concave, narrowed at the base, mostly white, but sometimes tinged 

 with rose or purple. The stamens are numerous (said to be twenty- 

 four) and unequal, and comprise many simple yellow filaments 

 shorter than the blossom (one-half or one-third the length of the 

 petals), with oblong, linear, and innate orange anthers. The pis- 

 til is composed of an ovary (germ or seed bud) of an oblong and 

 compressed form, with no style, but with a sessile, thick, persistent 

 stigma, possessing a striated double groove, and is of the same 

 height as the stamens. The pericarp (fruit or seed vessel) is supe- 

 rior, and has an oblong and bulging pod-like capsule about an inch 

 or more long, tapering to a sharp point at both ends, two-valved, 

 forming a single cavity, filled with numerous oval, reddish-brown 

 seeds. The valves of the capsule are caducous, the columella 

 double and permanent. Receptacles or placentas two, filiform, 

 marginal, and persistent. 



Specific Characters. — The rhizoma is horizontal, creeping, 

 abrupt, often contorted, half an inch in diameter or about as thick 

 as the finger, two to four inches long, tuberous and perennial ; 

 reddish-brown color on the outside and brighter red within, dis- 

 charging when wounded an acrid, orange-red coloured juice, with a 

 number of long slender radicles, and makes offsets from the sides, 

 which succeed the old plant. There is no aereal stem. From the 

 end of the root arise the scape and leaf-stalks (rarely a pair of 

 leaves) surrounded by two or three large membranous sheathing 

 scales of the bud, at their base. -These spring up together, the 

 folded leaf enveloping the flower bud, and rolling back as the latter 

 expands. The petiole (leaf stalk) is from two to six inches long, 

 slender, round, and glabrous. The leaf, which stands upon a long 

 channelled petiole, is radical, reniform, united at the base, some- 

 what heart-shaped or cordate-reniform, serrated, deeply or pal- 

 mately lobed, the lobes entire, or repandly toothed, very smooth, of a 

 pale yellowish green (sometimes quite dark) on the upper surface, 

 and glaucous or bluish-white and strongly reticulated by orange 

 colored veins. The scape is erect, round and smooth, often of a 



