g6 TILIACE^ 



hue, and the stems put on a ragged appearance. Children gather 

 and eat the unripe seed-vessels, which they call " cheeses " : they 

 are insipid, but not unwholesome. The pollen is a beautiful 

 object for the microscope, being studded with minute prickles, 

 which cause it to adhere to the hairy legs of bees visiting the 

 flowers. The crimson veins on the petals serve the insects as 

 " honey-guides " : the stamens ripen and discharge their pollen 

 before the circle of styles mature their stigmas, and subsequently 

 these styles bend over so that the stigmas can collect pollen, 

 brought from other flowers by insects, off the withered recurved 

 filaments. 



3. M. rotundifoUa (Dwarf Mallow).— A smaller prostrate 

 species; leaves roundish, heart-shaped, with 5 shallow lobes; 

 flowers less than an inch across, pale pink, without honey-guides ; 

 fruit downy. — Waste places, common. Its flowers are seldom 

 visited by insects, and mature their anthers and stigmas simul- 

 taneously. — Fl. June — September. Perennial. 



■^J/. verticilldta^ an erect species with petals not longer than its 

 sepals ; M. pusilla, a prostrate annual form resembling M. rotuii- 

 dijblia, but with shorter /^/czA; and "^M. parviflora, a branched 

 form with acutely-lobed leaves and short /^/<7A, occur occasionally, 

 but are not indigenous. 



Ord. XVIII. TiLiACE/i:. — The Linden Family 



A considerable family, mostly tropical, of trees, shrubs, and, 

 rarely, herbs ; leaves scattered, stipulate ; flowers cymose, poly- 

 symmetric ; sepals 5, rarely 4, valvate when in bud ; petals 

 equalling the sepals in number, often with a scale and pit at their 

 base, sometimes wanting; stamens numerous; carpels 2 — 10, 

 syncarpous ; style single ; stigmas and chambers o{ ovary as many as 

 carpels ; fruit dry or baccate, with one or more seeds in each 

 chamber. They all have a mucilaginous, wholesome juice, and 

 many of them are remarkable for the toughness of their fibrous 

 inner bark. Jute, for example, is the product of the East Indian 

 genus Corcliorus, and Russian bast is obtained from the Linden 

 {Tilia). 



I. Tilia (Linden). — Trees with oblique, cordate, serrate leaves ; 

 cymes with a large leafy bract adherent to the peduncle ; sepals 

 5, deciduous ; petals 5 ; stamens many ; ovary 5-chambered, 

 capsule i-chambered, indehiscent, i — 2-seeded. (Name, the 

 Latin name of the tree. The English name, now generally written 

 Lime, was Line in Shakespere's time.) A peculiar interest 

 attaches to the Linden from its having given a name to the 



