VII. PAPAVERACE.E (OLIVER). 55 



1. PUMARIA, Linn. ; Benth. et Hook. f. Gen. PI. i. 56. 



Fruit a small nearly globose or compressed achene. — "Diffuse or climbing 

 herbs. Leaves multisect with narrow or linear segments, glabrous and often 

 glaucous. 



Not indigenous in Tropical Africa. 



*1. F. officinalis, Linn. ; DC. Prod. i. 130. A pale, weak annual, dif- 

 fuse, trailing or climbing. Leaves decompound with linear lanceolate or ob- 

 long, acute or obtuse, often mucronulate segments. Bracteoles shorter than 

 or sometimes exceeding the pedicels. Plowers white rose or purplish. Achene 

 globose, obtuse retuse or subapiculate, smooth or slightly rugose. 



Var. a. Achenes obtuse or retuse. 



Var. ^. (F. parvijlora, Lam.) I'lowers very small (l^-S lines). Sepals minute. Achenes 

 Bomewfiat pointed. 



Nile Iiand. Cornfields, etc., Abyssinia, Schimper I Ruth! Petit. ^Vhite Nile, 

 Petherick ! 



This species, under one or other of its forms, is widely spread through Europe and tem- 

 perate Asia. 



Order VIII. CRUCIFERiE (by Prof. Oliver). 



Flowers hermaphrodite, regulnr or the petals on the side turned from the 

 axis larger. Sepnls 4, free, the lateral pair often more or less saccate at the 

 base or inserted a little lower than the others. Petals 4, rarely 0, narrowed 

 below or clawed, spreading and cruciate above. Stamens usually 6, four 

 inner ones in pairs and longer than the two outer. Ovary 1-celled with 2 pa- 

 rietal placentas, or more usually 2-celled owing to the development of a thin 

 membranous septum connecting the placentas. Style simple or ; stigma 

 2-fid or undivided ; ovules 1, 2, or indefinite, usually horizontal or pendulous. 

 Fruit long {siliqua) or short (silicule), 2-celled or sometimes 1-cellcd, de- 

 hiscing by valves which separate from. their persistent, seed-bearing margins 

 {replum), or indehiscent, or separating into cocci or 1-seeded articles. Seeds 

 rarely albuminous. Embryo usually with plane or plano-convex cotyledons, 

 the radicle either folded against their edges (accumbent o = ) or against the 

 back of one of them (incumbent o = ), or the cotyledons condnj^licati' or 

 doubly or spirally folded. — Herbs, sometimes shrubby with colourless often 

 pungent juice, glabrous, glaucous, or with simple mcdiolixed or stellate hairs. 

 Leaves simple, alternate, exstipulate, pinnatitid toothed or entire. Flowers 

 racemose or corymbose at first, rarely bracteate, usually white yellow or rose. 



A very large and widely dispersed Order, characteristic of the temperate and cold regions 

 of the northern hemisphere, and especially abundant around the Mediterranean and in Asia 

 j\Iinor. But few genera are peculiar to the southern hemisphere. Of these the largest \i 

 Heliophila, ri -tricked to S. extratropieal Africa, some species of whieh may probably turn 

 up north of the tropic. Many of the Crucifera are useful esculents or oil-producing jjlants, 

 and are extensively cultivated in tropical as well as temperate climates. 



It is probable that several peculiar genera, atfec^ting the desert regions of Arabia and N. 

 Africa, may extend south of the tropic of Cancer. I have given diagnoses, uuder their 

 recorded tropical allies, of a few of the more likely of these. 

 A. Fruit usually many times (3 times or more) longer than broad, 



dehiscing longitudinally. 



