SOLANACEAE NIGHTSHADE FAMILY 
MATRIMONY VINE 
Lycium halimifolium Mill. 
The Matrimony Vine is another member of the Nightshade 
family not native but introduced from Europe as an ornamental 
plant. It is a climbing or trailing shrub which is often used for 
covering fences, stumps or other unsightly 
objects, and which in many places has es- 
caped to waste lands and thickets. It is 
found locally from Ontario to Virginia and 
west to Minnesota and Kansas. 
The branched, often spiny stems are 
6-25 feet long. The branches are somewhat 
angled and the spines, when present, are 
slender and about one-half inch long. 
The flowers are produced from May to 
August, either solitary or 2-5 in the axils of 
leaves. The bell-shaped calyx is 3-5- 
toothed or lobed and persists at the base of 
the fruit. Very often it is somewhat de- 
formed by small insect galls on its surface. 
The funnel-shaped 5-lobed corolla is at 
first purple and fades to greenish as it gets 
old. The 5 stamens are attached near the 
upper end of the corolla tube, the filaments 
being somewhat hairy at the base. There 1s 
I pistil with a 2-celled ovary and a slender 
style. The fruit is a bright orange-red oval 
berry about one-half inch long or less, and 
half as thick. These very pretty berries are 
not edible to man but they are undoubtedly 
eaten by birds. 
The poppy tosses here its torch, 
And the tall bee-balm flaunts its fire, 
And regally the larkspur lifts 
The slender azure of its spire. 
And from the phlox and mignonette 
Rich attars drift on every hand; 
And when star-vestured twilight comes 
The pale moths weave a saraband. 
A Midsummer Garden—CLINTON SCOLLARD 
297 
