ALLIUM PALMERL 

 PALMER'S ONION. 



NATURAL ORDER, LILIACE^. 



Allium Palmeri, Sereno Watson. — Reticulation irregular, sub quadrate, the cell outline 

 minutely vei7 sinuous; scape eight inches high, rather stout; leaves narrow-linear; 

 umbel many-flowered, the spreading pedicels six lines long; sepals more or less deep 

 rose-color, three to four lines long, acute, erect-spreading, exceeding the stamens. (Wat- 

 son's Botany of the Geological Exploration of the fortieth parallel, under Clarence King.) 



HEN the reader who may not be well acquainted with 

 botanical classification understands that the onion is an 

 Allium, and that Allmm is a genus belonging to the great order 

 of LiliacecE, or the Lilies, he will perhaps be startled by the 

 association. Oftentimes appearances so favor classification, that 

 the popular mind can scarcely err in its impressions. It would 

 unite what the botanists would join all in one family. But there 

 are some so closely related, that botanists can hardly find any 

 reasons for separating what the average observer would never 

 bring together ; and this case of Allium among the Lilies is one 

 of these. And yet popular resemblances have to be respected 

 to a certain extent even in botany, and thus such plants as the 

 Tulip and the Lily, though held under the Liliaceous order, are 

 placed in a separate subdivision from that in which the onion is 

 held. The former is known as the Tulipce section, while the 

 latter is in the Scillce or squills, and yet when botanical science 

 looks for some great dividing line between what in appearance 

 is so distinct, little more can be found than this, that while in the 

 Tulipceaii section the anthers fall from the filaments on a light 

 touch, in the squills they are so firmly fastened, that all parts of 

 the stamen fade ^way together. The Liliaccce constitute one of 



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