72 FLOWERS OF THE HEATHS AND MOORS 



mentil, Wood Betony, and other xerophilous species. Here the grass 

 habit is most pronounced, enabling the plant to clamber up between the 

 chevaux-de-frise of a furze bush under the best conditions. Without 

 some such support this tall but graceful, though spreading, plant 

 would be unable to hold itself erect. It has a square and smooth 

 suberect stem, jointed and grooved. The leaves are linear-lance- 

 shaped, opposite, distant, and few, smooth, but fringed with hairs and 

 stalkless. 



The flowers are numerous, small, panicled, and borne on spreading, 



GRASSY STITCHWORT (Stellaria gmminea, L.) 



forking flower-stalks, with leaflike organs with membranous margin. 

 The petals are narrow, as long as the 3-nerved sepals, and divided into 

 two nearly to the base. The sepals are acute, the stamens numerous, 

 the anthers red. The capsule is longer than the calyx, oblong, and 

 the flower- stalks are turned down in front at first, then at right angles. 

 The whole plant is dark-green and shining, not bluish-green. Grassy 

 Stitchwort is i to 2 ft. high. The flowers last from April till August. 

 It is a perennial plant, increasing by division. 



The 5 nectaries surround the base of the 5 outer stamens. The 

 plant is pollinated in three stages. First of all the 5 outer stamens 

 curve toward the centre, the anthers open first and are smothered 

 in pollen, then they curve out and down. The inner stamens bend 

 outwards and take their place, the anthers being still closed, and the 



