204 THE SPURGES. 



LV. THE SPURGES. 



Description Some of these homely plants are common 

 throughout the country. They are noted for their acrid, 

 milky juice. The attention of the botanist is due them on 

 acceunt of the strange construction of the flowers. The 

 Spurge here figured will be found blossoming in June and 

 after, in open fields and waysides. 



Analysis. GENERIC CHARACTERS. The Flowers of the 

 Spurges are often too small to be understood without the aid 

 of a microscope. The "calyx" is cup-shaped, bearing on 

 its margin 5 or 4 glands of peculiar form and red or white 

 color. Within it stand several or many stamens, each with a 

 minute bractlet attached at its base, and a joint above. In 

 the midst, is an ovary raised on a foot-stalk and tipped with 

 3 styles, each 2-cleft, so that there are 6 stigmas (half- 

 stigmas). 



Now what mean these bractlets, joints, and foot-stalk ? 

 They imply, as botanists interpret, that each stamen is a 

 flower of itself a staminate, monandrous flower with a ped- 

 icel in the axil of a bract ; that the ovary is a pistillate 

 flower consisting of 3 united carpels ; and the " calyx " is- an 

 involucre inclosing the little flower-group. As it grows 

 older, the pistillate flower arises on its pedicel quite outside 

 of the involucre and ripens into 3 carpels, separable into 

 3 nutlets, each with one seed. 



The milk-white juice already noted, flows from every 

 incision, is always acrid in taste, in some species venomous, 

 and it should be avoided. 



The Name Euphorbia is the title of the genus charac- 

 terized in the above description a genus of vast extent, 

 growing in all countries and embracing more than 700 spe- 



