Classification of Plants 341 



tened at the back, with narrow wings at the side. B. galbanum, 

 L. (wild celery), is a common shrub with wedge-shaped leaflets. 

 Some people are poisoned by touching the leaves. 



Bupleurum has compound umbels of yellow flowers. 

 Fruit flattened at the sides. First leaves divided, upper ones 

 simple, linear. The petioles may become changed into phyl- 

 lodes. 



Arctopus is a common, low-growing plant with a rosette 

 of leaves flat on the ground. The flowers are dioecious, but 

 the two plants are not far apart. The staminate flowers have 

 ovaries which are sterile. The involucre leaves are sometimes 

 large and spine-tipped. 



Hermas is a large almost shrubby plant, with entire leaves 

 and large compound umbels of white or purple flowers. Some 

 umbels contain only staminate flowers. The leaves are large, 

 simple, clothed on one or both sides with white, woolly hairs. 

 Hermas gigantea, L. _/"., is the " tondelboom ". 



Garden vegetables belonging to this order, are parsnip, 

 carrot, celery, caraway. 



While every South African knows in general what heaths 

 are, it is difficult to give in a few terms the characteristics of 

 the order. A so large and widely distributed order we should 

 expect to vary in different ways from any genus which might 

 be taken as a type. 



That the flowers are perfect and the corolla regular are 

 about the only unqualified statements that can be made of the 

 floral characters. The glandular disc " usually " present be- 

 neath the ovary suggests that the order may be one derived 

 from the Geranial group of Choripetalre, a group that usually 

 retains a double whorl of stamens and carpels equal in number 

 to the petals. 1 



Calyx free 4-6 toothed, lobed or parted. 



1 In the orders belonging to the cohorts Contortae and Tubiflorae the 

 disc is also frequently evident. It is possible that they too have had a 

 Geranial origin, an opinion held by Werner. (" New Phytologist," 1913.) 



