THE GINGER FAMILY. 401 



often green and unisexual. Few families are so generally poisonous, 

 the list being headed by the Veratrums, known by their large, oval, 

 parallel-veined and strongly-ribbed leaves, and great pyramidal panicles 

 of insignificant green flowers. Both the V. album and the V. viricle 

 are grown in gardens, along with some curious plants called Uvularia, 

 and the celebrated colchicum, which last is reputed wild in our 

 neighbourhood. The colchicum has broadly-lanceolate leaves, eight 

 or ten inches long ; and large, half- subterranean, long-tubed flowers 

 resembling those of the purple crocus, but redder, and of a broken 

 instead of uniform tint, with six instead of three stamens, and a 

 superior ovary. 



HABITATS AND LOCALITIES. 

 Colchicum — ( Colchicum autumnule.) 

 "Near Middleton." (B. G.) Abundant in a field midway between 

 "Whalley and Accrington. (Mr. Leigh.) Fl. September, after the 

 leaves of the current year are dead, the capsule being concealed in the 

 ground during the winter, and making its appearance towards May, 

 along with the foliage of the new season. 



E. B. ii. 133 ; Baxter, i. 17. 



CXXXI.— THE GINGER FAMILY. Scitayn'mem. 



Herbaceous plants, with large aromatic root-stocks, exclusively 

 tropical, and generally speaking, of the highest floral beauty. The 

 species most commonly cultivated is the common ginger-plant or 

 Zingiber officinale. The leaves of the Scitaminea3 are at once parallel- 

 veined and feather- veined ; that is to say, a strong midrib runs from 

 the base of the leaf to the apex, with innumerable smaller veins flow- 

 ing from it in close and perfect parallelism away to the margin, but 

 although curving elegantly upwards, never converging, as in lilies, &:c., 

 to the point. This peculiarity distinguishes them ^rom all other 

 Endogens except the banana family and the arrow root family, in both 

 of which the veining is of similar character, but the bananas have 

 normally five or six stamens, the greater part of which are always 

 perfect, while here there is never more than one stamen, through the 

 abortion of the remainder. The arrow-root family, or Marantacece, 

 which agrees with them in imperfection of structure and in singular 

 beauty, is kept apart by its want of aroma. The S23ecies commonly 



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