CHELONE GLABRA. 

 TURTLE-HEAD. 



NATURAL ORDER, SCROPHULARIACE/E. 



Chelone glabra, Linnreus. — A foot or two feet (or in Illinois six to seven feet) high; leaves 

 from narrowly to rather broadly lanceolate (four to five inches long, four to twelve lines 

 wide), gradually acuminate, serrate with sharp appressed teeth, narrowed at the base into 

 a very short petiole : bracts not ciliate : corolla white, or barely tinged with rose, an inch 

 long. (Gray's Synoptical Flora of North America. See also Gray's Manual of the 

 Botany of the Northern United States, Chapman's Flora of the Southern United States, 

 and Wood's Class- Book of Botany.) 



|HIS very pretty wild flower will interest the collector, not 

 only because it is pretty, but also because it will furnish 

 material for good botanical lessons, especially in that part of 

 botany which deals with the evolution of form and the relation 

 which plants bear to one another in systems of classification. 

 Taking this latter topic first, it may be well to assume that a large 

 number of our readers know what is a Pentstemon, for they form 

 not only a very extensive genus, but some one or more of them 

 are found in most parts of the territory covered by our work — 

 the United States. Besides this, the Pentstenion has been 

 improved by skilful florists, and thus has become a very popular 

 garden plant, and afforded many besides those who go out to 

 gather wild flowers, the opportunity of being acquainted with 

 them. The natural order to which the Fentstejnon, Chelone, 

 and many other American plants belong, ScrophulaiHacea, has 

 usually two pairs of didynamous or twin stamens, one pair 

 generally above the other ; but occasionally some of the number 

 are abortive and only two stamens appear. On the other hand, 

 there is at times a tendency to add to the normal number four, 

 by the introduction of a fifth stamen. In Pentsteinon this fifth 



("85) 



