LACHNANTHES TINCTORIA. 

 WOOL-FLOWER. 



NATURAL ORDER, HyEMODORACE^. 



Lachnanthes TINCTORIA, Elliott.— Root red, fibrous; stem mostly simple, villous above- 

 leaves linear-sword-shaped, smooth, the lower ones crowded and equiiant, the other 

 smaller and remote; flowers two-ranked, crowded in lateral and terminal compound 

 woolly cymes, yellowish within; exterior lobes of the perianth linear; valves of the 

 capsule separating from the placentae; seeds black. (Chapman's /7^/-« o/ ^/id- Southern 

 United States. See also Gray's Manual of t/ie Botany of the N^orthern United States and 

 Wood's Class- Book of Botany.) 



|NE of the earliest of American botanical authors. Thomas 

 Walter, who in 1788 wrote the "Flora Caroliniana," 

 mentions the plant we now illustrate, and called it Anonynins 

 tiiidoria, which would be literally "a dyer's plant without a 

 name." In the early part of the present century it came under 

 the notice of Pursh, who believed it to be a Dilatris, a small 

 genus hitherto found only at the Cape of Good Hope. Michaux, 

 before him, had supposed it was identical with a genus named 

 by Schreber in 1789 in honor of the distinguished botanist, 

 L'Heritier, in which genus the celebrated "looking-glass plant" 

 is found. It was not till 1821 that its true position as a distinct 

 genus was determined by Stephen Elliott, who wrote the 

 " Sketch of the Botany of South Carolina and Georgia," and 

 who named it Lachnanthes — the name it still bears. This litde 

 piece of history shows how interesting the plant must be to the 

 student, when so many excellent botanists failed to discover its 

 true relationship ; and it proves that Walter was not much to 

 blame when in apparent despair he declared the genus to be 

 "anonymous." 



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