PAP AVER RHOEAS. 



67 



be 'Papaver cruciforme ' c Crosslet Poppy,' first, be- 

 cause all our botanical names must be in Latin if possible ; 

 Greek only allowed when we can do no better; secondly, 

 because meconopsis is barbarous Greek ; thirdly, and chiefly, 

 because it is little matter whether this poppy be Welsh or 

 English ; but very needful that we should observe, wher- 

 ever it grows, that the petals 

 are arranged in what used to 

 be, in my young days, called 

 a diamond shape,* as at A, 

 Fig. 10, the two narrow inner 

 ones at right angles to, and 

 projecting farther than, the 

 two outside broad ones ; and 

 that the two broad ones, when 

 the flower is seen in profile, 

 as at B, show their margins 

 folded back, as indicated by 

 the thicker lines, and have a 

 profile curve, which is only 

 the softening, or melting 

 away into each other, of two 

 straight lines. Indeed, when 

 the flower is younger, and 

 quite strong, both its profiles, 

 A and B, Fig. 11, are nearly 

 straight-sided ; and always, 

 be it young or old, one 

 broader than the other, so as 

 to give the flower, seen from above, the shape of a contracted 

 cross, or crosslet. 



6. Now I find no notice of this flower in Gerarde ; and in 

 Sowerby, out of eighteen lines of closely printed descriptive 

 text, no notice of its crosslet form, while the petals are only 

 stated to be "roundish-concave," terms equally applicable to 

 at least one-half of all flower petals in the world. The leaves 



FIG. 11. 



* The mathematical term is ' rliomb.' 



