490 



PLANTS AND MAN 



Ornamental Monocot Flowers 



The Arum Family which includes the familiar spring flowers 

 skunk cabbage and jack-in- the-pulpit gives us the call a lily, 

 a native of Africa which is grown as an outdoor aquatic in our 

 southern states. The fleshy axis, with its numerous small flowers, 

 is surrounded by a conspicuous broad spathe which may be 

 white, pink or straw colored. 



The true lilies include a number of familiar ornamental 

 plants (flg. 306) : the common Easter lily is a native of China 

 and Japan, and from this same region comes the orange-red 



A « B 



Fig. 306. — Day lilies (A) and tulips (B) are ornamentals of the Lily Family. 



TIGER LILY. Other members of the lily family which are cultivated 

 as ornamentals are the tulips and hyacinths. The tulip genus is 

 native of Asia, Asia Minor and the Mediterranean regions. 

 Tulips grow from bulbs which produce basal leaves and large 

 solitary flowers with sepals and petals alike in color. Hyacinth, 

 whose original home is Greece and Asia Minor, also has basal 

 leaves but produces a cluster of small flowers each with six 

 segments to the perianth. 



In the Amaryllis Family there is another familiar ornamental, 

 the narcissus; various species are native of Europe and the Orient. 

 Each flower has an elongated tubular basal portion and six 

 perianth segments bearing in their throat a crown known as the 



