POLYGALACE^ — LEGUMINOS^ 347 



POLYGALA. Milkwort. 



Mostly herbs, with bitter juice: flowers very irregular, some often 

 cleistogamous: sepals 5, unequal, 2 of them winged and colored (petal like) : 

 petals 3, usually united into a tube, the middle petal hooded or crested, or 

 otherwise appendaged: stamens 6 or 8, the filaments usually monadelphous, 

 but the sheath split, more or less connate, within or hidden in the middle 

 petal: ovary 2-celled. The irregularity of the flowers makes some of the 

 species conspicuous, but others have very minute flowers, difficult to 

 examine. 



i . paucifdlia, Willd. Frivged pohjqala. Flowering wintergreen. The 

 most striking of the common milkworts, the flower being large (about 1 in. 

 long) and showy, rose-purple, with a fine, fringed crest on the central 

 corolla lobe: plant low, 3-4 in. high, branching, from a creeping rootstock, 

 with oval petiolate leaves clustered near the tips of the stems, the lower 

 leaves scale-like: there are small, whitish and fertile (cleistogamous) flowers 

 on the rootstock. In moist, rich woodland. East and North. 



P. S6nega, Linn. Seneca snakeroot. Flowers small in terminal, slender, 

 spike-like racemes: stem erect, 8-15 in., simple and leafy: leaves lanceolate, 

 alternate: flowers white, or greenish, on very short pedicels: corolla with 

 small crest. Perennial. 



XXVIII. LEGUMINOS^. Pulse, or Pea Family. 



Herbs, shrubs, or trees, mostly with pinnately compound alter- 

 nate leaves: flower papilionaceous in the species described below, 

 fruit typically a legume. A vast family and widely dispersed, with 

 many tropical species. Genera about 400, and species about 6,500. 

 By some authors, the species with papilionaceous flowers are separated 

 into the family Papilionacea?, and those of the acacia tribes, with 

 regular flowers, as the Mimosacese. Familiar leguminous plants are 

 pea, bean, lupine, clover, alfalfa, vetch, wistaria, locust, red- bud. 



A. Shrubs, twining 1. Wistaria 



AA. Trees, or erect shrubs. 



B. Leaves once or twice pinnately compound: flowers 



in racemes: often large trees. 



C. Flowers truly papilionaceous, rather large and 



showy, usually fragrant: leaves with sharp 



spines or prickles often in place of stipules... 2. Rohinia 



cc. Flowers small, greenish and inconspicuous, not 



truly papilionaceous: tree usually armed with 



large pronged thorns 3. Gleditschia 



BB. Leaves simple, entire: corolla not truly papilionace- 

 ous: fls. in umbel-like clusters, before the leaves 4. Cercis 



