120 



PAPAVERACE^E. 



[CLASS 



Herbs with milky or yellow juice. Flowers regular. Petals 4 

 Stamens indefinite. Placentas parietal. 



Type The Field Poppy ( Papai'er rh&as). 

 An annual herb, with milky juice, and showy solitary 

 fugacious flowers. 



As the sepals fall away before the crumpled petals 

 expand, a bud should always accompany the specimen 

 examined. Sepals falling away thus early are termed 

 caducous. 



A deviation from this Type we find in Common Celan- 

 dine (Chelidonium majus) y in which but 2 coherent 

 carpels form the pistil. 



OBSERVE the milky juice flowing freely from wounds 

 in the Poppy. The Opium Poppy (Papaver somniferuni) 

 is cultivated to a great extent in the East, especially in 

 India, for the sake of this juice, which, when dry, be- 

 comes brown, and forms the narcotic drug, opium. The 

 \vell-known medicine, laudanum, and the poisonous 

 alkaloid, morphia, are prepared from opium. The juice 

 of the Poppy, used in opium-making, is collected from 

 gashes made in the unripe pericarp. The juice of Com- 

 mon Celandine is of a bright orange colour. 



Observe, also, a cross section of a large Poppy-head, 

 such as druggists sell ; the placentation is parietal, as the 

 infolded margins of the carpels are not united in the 

 centre. The seeds are scattered over the sides of the 

 projecting partial dissepiments, instead of being confined 



