328 The Romance of Wild Flowers 
universal distribution of the Lilies throughout the 
world that they too are of great age. 
Now turning to those plants admitted within the 
Lily family, we have two species constituting the 
Asparagus tribe in which the conditions of the flowers 
are very similar to those of Black Bryony, except that 
the ovary is here within the female flower instead of 
below it. Asparagus (Asparagus officinalis), whose 
medicinal virtues were well known to the Romans 
at least two hundred years B.c., and are still recog- 
nised, is found in a few localities 
\ on the coasts of Dorset, Cornwall, 
and Wales, as well as in one Irish 
locality and the Channel Islands. 
It is, however, best known as a 
cultivated plant. The leaves are 
reduced to minute triangular 
scales scarcely noticeable, and in 
their axils are branches of needle- 
shaped branches, or “cladodes,” 
which generally pass for the leaves. The tiny 
flowers are bell-shaped, whitish or yellowish veined 
with red, and produced either singly or in pairs. 
As in Black Bryony, the stamens are borne by 
different flowers from those containing pistils, but 
it would appear to be almost certain that this 
species is descended from one in which the sexes 
were combined in each flower, for the male flowers 
contain a rudimentary pistil, and the female flowers 
have rudimentary stamens. The male flowers are 
much larger than the females, an evident purpose of 
this being to induce a visiting insect to enter the male 
flowers first and get dusted with pollen to be after- 
Female Male 
Asparagus 
