132 



C ARYOPH YLL ACE AE . 



Family 9. CARYOPHYLLACEAE Reichenb. 



Pink Family. 



Annual or perennial herbs, with watery sap and usually erect stems 

 swollen at the nodes. Leaves opposite, often with connate bases; stipules 

 none. Flowers perfect, polygamous or rarely dioecious. Calyx of 4 or 5 

 united sepals forming a toothed tube. Corolla often showy, of 4 or 5 petals 

 with narrow claws. Stamens usually twice as many as the petals ; filaments 

 usually distinct, inserted like the corolla and 1-celled ovary on the columnar 

 prolongation of the receptacle. Pistil 1, compound. Styles 2-5. Ovules 

 numerous. Fruit a capsule opening by 2-5 apical valves. Seeds many or 

 rarely few, with the embryo straight or nearly so. About 20 genera and 

 perhaps 600 species, most abundant in the northern hemisphere. 



1. SILENE L. 



Herbs, with mainly pink, red or white flowers. Calyx more or less inflated, 

 5-toothed or 5-cleft, 10-many-nerved, not bracted at the base. Petals 5, nar- 

 row, clawed. Stamens 10, Styles 3 (rarely 4 or 5) ; ovary 1-celled, or incom- 

 pletely 2-4-eelled. Pod dehiscent by 6 or rarely 3 apical teeth. Seeds mainly 

 spiny or tubercled. [Greek, saliva, in allusion to the viscid secretions of many 

 species.] About 250 species, of wide geographic distribution. Type species: 

 Silene anglica L. 



Petals longer than the calyx ; plants hirsute or villous-pubescent. 



Flowers in spike-like racemes, diurnal, small. 1. 8. anglica. 



Flowers panicled, nocturnal, large. 2. S. noctiflora. 



Petals minute ; plant glandular-puberulent. 3. 8. nocturna. 



1. Silene anglica L. English or 

 Small-flovtered Catchfly. (Fig. 155.) 

 Annual, hirsute-pubescent; stem l°-2° 

 high. Leaves spatulate or oblanceolate, 

 V-2' long, obtuse, sometimes mucronate, 

 or the upper narrower and acute; flowers 

 in a terminal simple 1-sided raceme, 

 nearly sessile or the lower ones distant 

 and longer-pedieelled, sometimes all dis- 

 tinctly pedicelled; calyx 10-nerved, vil- 

 lous, 4"-5" long, much enlarged by the 

 ripening pod, its teeth lanceolate, spread- 

 ing; petals white, somewhat longer than 

 the calyx. [S. gallica L.] 



Rare or occasional in waste and cul- 

 tivated grounds. Introduced. Native of 

 Europe. Flowers in spring. Adventive or 

 naturalized in the United States. 



