PASSION-FLOWER FAMILY. 157 



1. MESEMBRYANTHEMUM, FIG-MARIGOLD. (Name com- 

 posed of Greek words signifying flowering at midday.) Cult, for ornament, 

 chiefly from S. Africa : fl. summer. 



# Annual or biennial, broad-leaved, prostrate, cultivated in open around. 



M. crystallinum, ICE-PLANT. Plant remarkable for the glittering little 

 excrescences which cover the herbage, like hoar-frost ; leaves soft and tender, 

 large, the lower rounded heart-shaped or ovate, upper spatulate, wavy ; flowers 

 sessile, white or purplish, ' across. 



* * Perennial, somewhat woody-stemmed house-plants, from Cape of Good Hope : 



leaves all opposite, sessile or connate at base, smooth. 



M. dolabriforme, HATCHET-LEAVED F. With glaucous and dotted 

 hatchet-shaped leaves, and yellow flowers opening at evening. 



M. acinaciforme, SCYMITAR-LEAVED F. With pale 3-sided sabre- 

 shaped leaves (3' long, fully ' wide), flattened branches and peduncle, and 

 pink-purple flower 3' -4' across. 



M. spectabile. With glaucous and linear 3-sidcd pointed leaves, and 

 pink-purple flower 2' across. 



2. TETRAGONI A. (Name Greek for four-angled, from shape of the fruit. ) 

 T. expansa, NEW ZEALAND SPINACH. Occasionally cult, as a Spinach : 



leaves pale, triangular or rhombic-ovate, with short margined petioles ; greenish 

 small flower sessile in the axils ; stamens several, in clusters alternate with the 

 4 lobes of the calyx. 



51. PASSIPLORACE^l, PASSION-FLOWER* FAMILY. 



Represented mainly by the Passion-flowers described below. In 

 conservatories may be found one or two species of TACSONIA, dif- 

 fering from true Passion-flowers in having a long tube to the flower, 

 but they are uncommon, and rarely blossom. 



1. PASSIFLORA, PASSION-FLOWER. (Flower of the Passion ; the 

 early Roman Catholic missionaries in South America finding in them symbols 

 of the crucifixion, the crown of thorns in the fringes of the flower, nails in 

 the styles with their capitate stigmas, hammers to drive them in the stamens, 

 cords in the tendrils.) Herbs or woody plants with alternate leaves and con- 

 spicuous stipules, climbing by simple axillary tendrils ; the flowers also axil- 

 lary, usually with 3 bracts underneath, and a joint in the peduncle. Calyx 

 with a very short tube or cup, and 5 divisions which are colored inside like the 

 petals, and often with a claw-like tip. Petals 5 on the throat of the calyx, or 

 sometimes none : within them the conspicuous crown of numerous filaments 

 or rays, forming a double or more compound fringe. Stamens 5, with nar- 

 row-oblong versatile anthers : their filaments united in a tube below sheath- 

 ing and adhering more or less to the long stalk which supports the 1 -celled 

 ovary. Styles 3, mostly club-shaped : stigmas capitate. Fruit berry-like, 

 edible in several species, with many seeds, enveloped in pulp, on 3 parietal 

 placentae. Fl. summer, open for only one day. 



# Wild species of the country, herbaceous, smooth, with 3-lobed leaves. 



P. llirea. Low grounds, from S. Penn. to 111. & S. : slender, low-climbing, 

 with the short and blunt lobes of the leaves entire, and a greenish-yellow flower 

 of no beauty, barely 1' wide. ^ 



P. incarnata, the fruit, called MAYPOPS in S. States, edible, as large as a 

 hen's egg : trailing or low-climbing, with deeply 3-cleft serrate leaves, a pair of 

 glands on the petiole and one or more on the small bracts, the purple crown 

 of the handsome flower (2' -3' across) rather longer than the pale petals. 

 Dry ground, from Virginia and Kentucky S. 11 



* * Cult, from South America. Stems woody, except the first. (These are the 



commoner species : there are a few hybrids and rarer ones.) 



