186 THE LADl's-MANTLE FAMILY. 



saturate the whole house with their honied odour and golden brightness. The 

 commonest in cultivation is the Acacia armata, with abundance of simjile, lance- 

 olate leaves, an inch and a half long, and solitary, axillary globes of flowers, 

 ■copiously produced on the upper part of the branches. 



Next to the Acacias come a multitude of pretty shrubs belonging to the genera 

 Chorizcma, Pulten<Ba, Eutaxia, Kcnnedya, itc, mostly with simple, and often 

 holly-edged leaves ; and overhead the Wistaria, which seems a copy of the 

 laburnum in lilac. Least conspicuous of any, as to flowers, but the most 

 remarkable of the whole family, in the green-house, are the sensitive plants, — the 

 Mimosa sensitiva and the Mimosa pudlca, the leaflets of which droop directly 

 they are touched. In very good collections may also be seen the " mo\-ing-plant," 

 or Desmodium gyrans, whose clover-like leaflets keep slowly rising and sinking, 

 independent of any stimulus from without. 



L.— THE LADY'S-MANTLE FAMILY. Sanguisorhdce<B. 



Herbaceous plants (except a few foreign ones, which are under- 

 shrubby), with alternate, stipulate leaves, generally on long petioles 

 when fully gi'own, and either simple and fan-lobed, and plaited like a 

 lady's fan, or interruptedly-pinnate. Perianth single, with a thickened 

 tube, and a three, four, or five-lobed margiu, the four-lobed being most 

 usual. Stamens usually four ; ovary solitary, and containing a single 

 ovule. The flowers are sometimes imisexual. Being small and incon- 

 spicuous, they would often be passed by, were it not that the inflores- 

 cence is usually dense, and often capitate, rendering the plants in 

 many cases extremely pretty. They grow in fields, on heaths, and 

 exposed places in most parts of the world outside the tropics, to the 

 number of one hundred species or more, and are noted for their 

 astringency. Five occur wild in England, and three of them near 

 Manchester, all having a four-lobed perianth and four stamens. 



1. Flowers purplisli-red, in dense terminal spikes, an inch or"\ 



more long. Stems two to three feet high, liranched atl „ _, 



" ^ - , , n ■ * ti I Common Burnet. 



the upper part. Leaves large, elegantly pmnate ; the 



leaflets oval and serrate, with smaller ones between . . . . / 



2. Flowers green, minute, in terminal, often sessile, corymbs ;\ 



leaves fan-veined, and fan-lobod, serrate, very elegant, I Common 

 the lower ones on long stalks ; stems three to eighteen 1 Laiiv's Mantle. 

 inches high ' 



3. Flowers green, minute, axillary, and sessile; three o^ ^^^ I p^„si ev I'ifrt 



four stamens sometimes absent. Leaves sessile J 



