PLANT AGINE.E— PLANTAIN TRIBE 83 



salt marshes of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridge. It is the smallest of the 

 British species, and remarkable for its much divided sterile branches, which 

 fork at an acute angle, and are very slender. The flowers are small and 

 crowded, of a pale lilac colour, expanding in July and August, in one-sided 

 terminal spikes. It is also known as *S'. heUidifolia. 



Order LXVII. PLANTAGINEiE— PLANTAIN TRIBE. 



Calyx -i-parted; corolla 4-parted, chafTy, not falling off; stamens 4, 

 alternate with the segments of the corolla, and having very long thread-like 

 filaments, and lightly attached anthers ; ovary 1 or 2-celled ; style 1 ; stigma 

 hairy ; capsule splitting transversely ; seeds 2 — 4, or many in each cell. 

 This order consists of herbaceous plants with slightly bitter and astringent 

 leaves, and mucilaginous seeds. Sevei^al of the tribe are found in all 

 temperate regions. 



L Plantain {FlaiUdgo). — Calyx 4-cleft, the segments bent back ; corolla 

 salver-shaped, -with 4 spreading lobes ; stamens very long ; capsule splitting all 

 round, 2 — 4-celled. Name of doubtful origin. 



2. Shore-weed (Liffm-dla). — Stamens and pistils in different flowers; 

 barren flow^er stalked ; stamens very long ; fertile flower sessile ; bracts 3 ; 

 corolla tubular, contracted at both ends ; style very long; capsule 1-seeded. 

 Named from litfiis, the shore, its place of growth. 



1. Plantain {Plaiddijo). 



1. Greater Plantain {P. major).- — Leaves broadly egg-shaped, mostly 

 on long channelled stalks ; flowers in a long cylindrical tapering spike ; sepals 

 Avith a prominent nerve at the back ; capsule 2-celled ; seeds oblong ; 

 perennial. Few of the dustiest and driest of our roadsides are without some 

 token of vegetation. Something besides a few blades of grass usually forms 

 a margin, which pleases the eye of man, and gives food to some beast or bird 

 or insect. We can scarcely wander away from the closely-paved city into 

 some suburb in which the more thinly -scattered dwellings gradually prepare 

 us for the country road, without finding a tuft of Plrntain, Its broad, 

 strongly-veined leaves lie spread around its rootstoek, r.nd from June to 

 September its tall spikes of greenish flowers, or the brown ripened seeds which 

 succeed them, invite the possessor of the captive bird to carry the plant away 

 for the meal of the songster. To thousands of bright and joyous creatures, 

 linnets, finches, and other wild birds, the young buds and seeds of the Plantain 

 afFoi'd a supply of food ; and doubtless the poet was right who told that to 

 some of the insect race the broad leaf served as a canopy : 



' ' While the moth for night's reprief 

 Waited safe and snug withal, 

 'Neath the Plaintain's bowery leaf, 

 Where not e'en a drop could fall. ' 



The flowers are on a stalk about a foot high, densely crowding it to about 

 the middle, and at the base of each little flower is a small bract. The length 

 of the leaf-stalk differs, and the leaves have usually seven nerves. There is 



11—2 



