224 PORTULACACEAE 
Light green, spreading, prostrate or partly erect. Flowers mostly 
terminal. 
z CLAYTONIA, L. 
Low weak stemmed plants with a pair of opposite leaves, exceptionally 
2 or even 3 pairs. Sepals 2, petals 5, stamens 5, inserted at the base of 
the petals, the style 3 parted at apex, capsule 3 to 6 sided. The bell- 
shaped, pretty, purple veined flowers in a loose terminal cluster. 
l. C. virginica, L. (Fig. 4, pl. 37.) Sprina Beauty. The weak 
stem springing from a tuberous root. Leaves linear lance-shaped (3 to 
7 in. long). Grows in moist open woods. Common. April-May. 
2. C. caroliniana, Michx. (Fig. 8, pl. 37.) CaroLina Sprine 
Beauty. Springing from a tuberous root. Leaves broader than No. I, 
ovate-lanceolate or oblong. Principally along the Alleghanies.  April- 
May. 
3, PORTULACA, L. 
Prostrate spreading weed with opposite fleshly leaves, smooth, with 
terminal inconspicuous yellow flowers. Sepals 2, petals 5, stamens 7 to 
15, petals generally 5 inserted on the calyx. Styles united below, di- 
vided above to 2 to 8. Seed box a capsule which often divides as a lid. 
P. oleracea, L. PurRSLANE. PuRSLEY. Prostrate, freely branching. 
Leaves fleshy, broad-ovate, clustered at the end of the stems. Flowers 
without flower stems at the axils of the leaves. In cultivated grounds. 
A troublesome weed. 
(The portulaca of the flower gardens is P. grandiflora, Hook. It is 
occasionally found escaped from cultivation.) 
Order IIL—CARYOPHYLLINEAE 
Flowers all regularly symmetrical, with calyx and corolla ex- 
cept in Paronychia, Anychia and Scleranthus, in which genera 
the corolla is wanting, as it is also in a few species of other genera. 
Divisions of the calyx 4 or 5, the petals when present equal in 
number to the calyx divisions. Sepals free or growing together 
forming a calyx tube. Petals never growing together. Stamens 
twice as many as the sepals or less than that number. ‘The stamen 
filaments sometimes united with each other, more frequently free. 
Ovary formed of 2 to 5 carpels, at maturity of a single cell. 
Styles 2 to 5. Seeds several or many, attached to a central 
column. 
Herbs, annual or with perennial roots. Stems often swollen 
at the nodes, leaves opposite, without stipules or, in a few species, 
with membraneous stipulate appendages to the leaves. 
