256 LILY OF THE VALLEY. 



are fertilized in its native mountains. There its red, round, 

 few-seeded berries are perfected in abundance. " 



Analysis. How much of the plant is subterranean ? On 

 this large proportion depends its almost unconquerable vital- 

 ity. The Lily of the Valley is strictly acaulescent. From 

 each bud of the running, slender rhizome arise 2 leaves and 

 several bracts involved together,* and a scape outside of them 

 (herein different from Erythronium), bearing a secund or 

 one-sided raceme. 



The *Pertanlh is remarkably distinguished, being strictly 

 gamopetalous. Its 6 united leaves are indicated only by the 

 six teeth of the border. But we are saying more than 

 behooves us. Let the student make thorough inquiry and 

 record of every organ, marking especially the contrasts with 

 Uvularia or Erythronium. 



The Name of this plant is Convallaria majalis ; the 

 generic term being derived from the Latin word for valley, 

 the usual place of growth of some of the species, f 



CUntonia. . In the coldest woods of the Northern States 

 grows the Yellow Clintonia (Fig. LXVII, 4), flowering in 

 June. The dignity and elegance of its port compensate for 

 its dull colors, and the collector is proud of its discovery. 



* In the portrait (Fig. LXVII) we seem to have a stem and a peduncle (a, s). But 

 the stem is only the petioles bound together by sheathing bracts. Let these be fused 

 as well as bound together, and they will become a stem indeed. Thus the origin and 

 nature of the stem are clearly indicated. It is formed of the united bases of all the 

 leaves even the columnar trunk, which lifts on high the organs it bears in order to 

 expose them more thoroughly to the quickening influence of the sun and air. We have 

 already seen that the various appendages of the stem the bracts and scales, the flower 

 with its several organs, and the fruit, are each but modifications of the leaf ; and now 

 we learn that the stem itself, even the woody trunk, is indeed a combination of leaves. 

 Hence the conclusion that the LEAF is the one only type of the whole plant. 



t Our Lily of the Valley is often supposed to have been the plant alluded to by 

 Christ when he bade his disciples "Consider the lilies of the field" (Matt, vi.,28). 

 Indeed the plant is called by name in Canticles ii., 1. But no Convallaria is found in 

 the Holy Land. The Krinon of the New Testament, rendered " Lily of the field," 

 may have been the red Martagon Lily (Lilium Chalced6nicum), or it may have been a 

 general term referring to the splendid scarlet Anemone (A. corondri"is) and Ranuncu- 

 lus (JR. Asidticus) which overspread the fields of Palestine. 



