48 ELEMENTS OF STRUCTURAL BOTANY. 



moist pastux'e lands and low copses. The name "Violet" 

 is somewhat unfortunate, because the plant is not in 

 any way related to the true Violets. To obtain a com- 

 plete specimen requires some trouble, owing to the fact 

 that the root is commonly six inches or so below the 

 surface of the ground'; you must therefore insert a spade 

 or strong trowel sufficiently deep to avoid cutting or 

 breaking the tender stem. Having cleared away the 

 adhering earth, you will find that the roots proceed from 

 what appears to be the swollen end oi the stem. This 

 swollen mass is coated on the outside with thin scales. 

 A section across the middle shows it to be more or less 

 solid, with the stem growing up through it from its 

 base. It is, in fact, not easy to say how much of this 

 stem-like growth is, in reality, stem, because it merges 

 gradually into the scape, which bears the flower, and the 

 petioles of the leaves, which sheathe the scape. The 

 swollen mass is called a bulb. 



G2. The leaves are two in number, gradually narrow- 

 ing at the base into sheaths. If you hold one of them 

 up to the light, you will observe that the veins do not, 

 as in the leaves of the Dicot3'ledonous plants, form a 

 network, but run only in one direction, namely, from 

 end to end of the leaves. Such leaves are consequently 

 called stndffht-veined. 



63. In the flower there is no appearance of a green 

 calyx. There are six yellow leaves, nearly alike, ar- 

 ranged in two sets, an outer and an inner, of three 

 each. In such cases, we shall speak of the colored 

 leaves collectively as the perianth. If the leaves are free 

 from each other, we shall speak of the perianth as poh/- 

 ]:Jii/Uo2is, but if they coliere we shall describe it as vaw?o- 



