ILLUSTRATIONS. 85 



which are very much shorter than the tube. The corolla, 

 which is regular, consists of five long-clawed spreading petals 

 which are deeply multifkl at the margin ; and there are ten 

 stamens, and two long recurving styles. 



Another plant of the same family, a common cornfield 

 weed, and at the same time a very pretty flower, is that known 

 as the Corn Cockle.*" This is a tall erect-growing annual, 

 slightly branched, hairy, with long narrow leaves, and large 

 showy regular flowers, on long leafless peduncles, borne on the 

 upper part of the stems. These flowers have a tubular calyx 

 with five long linear lobes projecting much beyond the petals, 

 which latter are broad undivided and spreading, tapering into 

 a long claw at the base, and forming together a large inodorous 

 flower, of circular outline, and of a pale reddish-purple colour. 

 There are ten stamens and five or rarely four styles. The 

 capsule, which opens in five teeth, contains numerous seeds. 



The Malvaceous family, another group of the same great 

 subdivision as the foregoing, is represented by the Common 

 Mallow f found abundantly in waste places. This plant is a 

 biennial, that is, of two seasons' duration, and has tall, erect or 

 ascending branching stems, clothed with roundish slightly -lobed 

 leaves, and bearing axillary clusters of reddish purple regular 

 flowers of the true mauve colour, these being the plants whence 

 the French name of that fashionable hue is derived. These 

 flowers will be found to have, external to the five-lobed calyx, 

 an involucel or little involucre of three small bracts inserted on 

 the lower part of the calyx ; within comes the whorl of five 

 wedge-shaped petals notched at the end, and the staminal 

 column, which is unlike anything previously described. It con- 

 sists of the filaments of the stamens united into a tube around 



* Lychnis Githago Plate 9 B. 

 f Malva sylvestris Plate 9 C. 



