Portulaca.| PORTULACACEAE. 39 
campylotropous, rising on slender stalks from the bottom of the capsule 
or from a central placenta. Embryo curved round a mealy albumen. — 
Succulent herbs, with opposite or alternate entire leaves. 
1. PORTULACA, Tourn. 
Calyx 2-cleft, with deciduous limb, the tube cohering with the ovary. 
Petals 5, with the 7—20 stamens inserted on the calyx, thin, fugacious. 
Style short, with 7—8 branches. Capsule globose, circumscissile with the 
free portion. — Fleshy herbs, with scattering leaves, the mbps 
forming an inyolucre round the yellow, — or eee flower 
bout 16 rem ed belonging to hee Amer. 
Stamens 7—1 1. P. oleracea. 
purple + Le og 
Petals whitish SP, scleroctegal 
1. P. oleracea, L.—DC. Prod. III,- 353. — A low prostate annual, 
fleshy and quite glabrous, without any hairs. Leaves obovate or spathulate. 
Flowers small, yellow, sessile above the last leaves or bracts. Sepals 
keeled. gg s very fugacious and scarcely exceeding the calyx. Stamens 
fa e 5-cleft. Seeds ieinptely = 
dently a perennial, of which ae has been in my herbarium, 
suspect that it is the P. lutea, Sol., spoken of in the vines gore aN 
2. P. villosa, Cham. in Linnaea, VI, 565. — <Low diffuse, with a fleshy 
root. Leaves lanceolate or linear, obtuse or subulate, with tufts of silky hair 
n the axils. Flowers sessile at the ends of the branches in a dense tuft of 
ba Peta purple, 5—6“, rather exceeding the keelless sepals. Stamens 
Seeds ae a Brg Gray). — Walp. Repert. II, 234. — 
Gras Bot. U.S. E. E. p. 140. — Nearly allied to the American P. pilosa, L. 
n dry rocky places, Diamond Hill a tenet Oahu (Cham. and U.S. E. E.). — 
Caiaiee ‘a: me, if really distinct from the llowing. 
3. P. sclerocarpa, Gray, Bot. U. S. E. Exp. p. 141. — Root fleshy 
and tuberous, woody when = Stems rather straight, thickened at the 
base, 2—5‘ high, much branched. Leaves terete subulate, 4—6“' long, 
eed longer than the copious hairs which occupy their axils and sides 
Flowers sessile and crowded at the ends of the branches. Calyx 91 Jo, 
basal, dividing into 8 rays or branches. Seeds reniform, smooth, not 
compressed. — , Fl. Haw. Islds. p. 22. — The capsules resemble 
