PAPAVERACE. 95 
vegetable world by the sudden springing into life of the brilliant Poppy flower. She lies 
concealed and carefully folded in her sea-green mantle until her full maturity arrives. 
Then the warm rays of the sun piercing her covering, she bursts forth, casts her 
rejected mantle from her, her silken drapery loses its wrinkled folds, and she appears 
at once a splendid and richly-dressed inhabitant of the flower garden, while we are 
wondering how so small a cell should have confined so much magnificence. Her beauty 
is, however, as evanescent as its appearance was sudden, Like the butterfly’s wing, 
such transparent tissue and vivid colours were not made to brave the winds and storms 
of life,— 
“ For pleasures are like poppies spread, 
You seize the flower, its bloom is shed ; 
Or like the snow, falls on the river— 
A moment white, then melts for ever ; 
Or like the borealis race, 
That flit ere you can point their place; 
Or like the rainbow’s lovely form, 
Evanishing amid the storm.” 
GENUS TIIT—ROEMERIA. D.C. 
Sepals 2, herbaceous, very caducous, falling off when the flower 
opens. Petals 4, crumpled in estivation, caducous. Stamens inde- 
finite. Capsule elongate-linear, resembling a siliqua, 1-celled, with 
the placentz nervelike, projecting into the interior of the fruit, 
terminated by the sessile stigma of 2 to 4 (usually 3) deflexed, free 
rays or lobes, and opening from the summit to the base by as many 
valves as there are stigmatic rays. Seeds numerous, punctured, 
without a strophiole. 
Annual herbs with dissected leaves and much of the habit of 
the genus Papaver. 
The genus is named after J. I. Romer, late Professor of Botany at Landshut. 
SPECIES I—ROEMERIA HYBRIDA. 
Puate LXIV. * 
Chelidonium hybridum, Zinn. Sp. Pl. p. 724. Sm. Eng. Bot. ed. i. No. 201, 
Glaucium hybridum, Zois. Fl. Gall. Vol. I. p. 376. 
Glaucium violaceum, Juss. Genera, 236. Sm. Eng. Fl. Vol. III. p. 7. 
Leaves thrice pinnatifid, the ultimate segments strap-shaped or 
linear. Capsule 3-valved, with a few bristly spines towards the top. 
In cornfields and chalk-pits. A very rare weed, occurring 
between Swaffham Prior and Burwell, Cambridgeshire, and also 
reported from Norfolk. 
England. Annual. Summer. 
* The Plate is E. B. 201, with apex of capsule added by Mr. J. E, Sowerby. 
