108 



THE MALLOW FAMILY. 



XII.— THE MALLOW FAMILY. MalvdcecB. 



One of the great patrician families of the earth, comprising trees, 

 shrubs and herbs, of the comeliest make and aspect, and of the 

 highest worth to man. Leaves simple, alternate, fan-veined, petioled 

 and stipuled, and more or less divided into lobes. Flowers shewy, 

 axillary, regular, with five petals, five sepals, and frequently an outer 

 calyx of three more. Stamens numerous, with long filaments that are 

 gradually shorter outwards, the whole united lengthwise into a tube 

 or cylinder, which encloses the ovaries and styles, leaving only the 

 stigmas exposed to view. The anthers form a tuft immediately 

 underneath, presenting, with the cylinder, the image of a little tree, 

 strikingly characteristic of the family. The fruit, in all the British, 

 and most of the hardy cultivated species, consists of thin, one- 

 seeded achenia, arranged edgeways in a whorl round the base of the 

 styles, and forming a thick, flat mass, the shape of a cheese. The 

 pollen, which is globular, and covered with spinous projections, forms 

 a very interesting object for the microscope. 



Fig. 94. 

 Section of Mallow flower. 



Fig. !)5. 

 Flower of Mallow. 



This fine tribe of plants, numbering about 1 ,000 known species, has 

 its chief seat in the tropics, where it is arborescent, and continues 

 plentiful in the hotter parts of temperate countries, but gradually 

 diminishes towards the north, and is faintly represented in the end by 

 a few weeds of the wayside. It abounds universally with mucilage, 

 and is not in a single instance deleterious. Several species are of use 

 to the physician ; others furnish fibres suitable for the manufacture of 

 cloth and cordage, and different kinds of Gossypium, the cotton that 

 has made so many thousands in Manchester rich and powerful. 



Six species grow wild in England, and three of them near Man- 

 chester. 



